A Paler Shade of Grey
by KatxValentine
Summary: -Third in the Dark Side of the Moon series- Harvey Tinkle, the unexpected Harley Quinn, finds herself pregnant with the Joker's child. When tensions between she and Cleave grow too overbearing, a certain villainess picks up the pieces. Enter: Poison Ivy.
1. Pregnant

So I asked myself, 'self, you're too lazy to wait a week, why not just start writing now?', and thus, I did! Welcome to the sequel to _Dark Side of the Moon_, and thank you for anybody who transitions over here to read this. The storyline, I will warn in advance, is going to get a _lot_ weirder than this in ways I won't be able to explain. I'm winging it completely, here XD I hate having to make up _entire_ storylines, but this opportunity is too rich to pass up. Sick!Harvey and Aw!Cleave both belongs to me, the Joker belongs to DC comics. Thanks to all who made it here, and on with the show!

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Is it morning already? I'll pay to sleep in.

When I wake, my eyes struggle to adjust to the light. There's some kind of tight bandage tied around my forehead, tucked under my hair, and when I touch at my neck I realize there's a scrap of cotton taped there like an attempt to plug up a hole. When I try to pick my head up off the pillow all I feel is a rush, like someone punches me right in the face.

_Hey, little girl, is your daddy home? Did he go and leave you all alone? I got a bad desire…oh, ho, ho I'm on fire…_

The fading sounds of Bruce Springsteen blast from the inner sanctum, and I finally realize there's a smudge of awkward red across my pillow. Also, another vital fact—my clothes are gone.

The almost-gone bruises left by big ol' Bat-butt are perfectly visible, and all over my thighs are little, minute red marks. I realize they cover my entire body ornately, from my legs to my neck, to my ears. It's a horrifying thought, but—

It stops short, anyway, when I have to trip over myself from the bed (in an oversized, pink, terrycloth bathrobe with a badly drawn bear on the back) and rush to the bathroom to puke so unimaginably that I feel my entire self tremble in a great heave. It's the grip-the-sides-of-the-toilets, clutch-the-porcelain-throne-in-the-aftermath kind of episode. And that's exactly what I do, until I shrink into myself on the floor and hug myself against the wonderful, cold material. Everything is fuzzy, and I realize that my glasses are on the nightstand and my eyes are tearing. And I'm still trying to cope, as hard as I possibly can, really, I am.

There's globs of green dye-or-whatever-the-fuck-it-is stuck to my fingertips. They stain it this mint jell-o color.

"Well, good _morning,_ toots!" The man of the hour, of course. He ruffles my hair and, oddity of oddities, leans over to kiss me atop the head before lavishly dropping himself on the edge of the bathtub to stare at me. I can't be a great sight. I'm almost as pale as he is, "What's with the deer in the headlight roo-_teen_, Harv-cakes? How's that ol' canoodle of yours feeling?"

Canoodle.

Canoodle: the act of senseless sex with a man who likes to dress up as a clown.

Canoodle: my thoroughly damaged skull.

"Canoodle?" I mutter, and grope stupidly at the jiggle-handle. I have to smack it, but it flushes and I listen to my life spiral down the drain. My stomach turns again, and I swallow so hard that the taste of vomit almost makes me want to vomit more, "Canoodle's feh—fine."

"Well, ya know, that was a hell of a fall you took. Had ta get rid of my favorite rug—it was—ah—it was _covered_ in Harvey-blood." The worst part of that sentence is the fact that he cracks a wide grin. Cleveland, I just think, Cleveland, you sick fuck.

The first question out of my mouth is, "Motrin?"

I watch a small, glorious, white capsule skitter eagerly toward me, and he holds out a tiny paper cup filled with water. I almost consider that he's shoving more drugs in my system, but I wonder what the purpose for it would be. He's sedated me enough in the past few hours to last a lifetime.

"I'll—ah, haveta change those in a bit. Not lookin' so sterile, if ya know what I mean." He prods at the side of my head, the spreading, splotchy disease of dark blood staining the material. I repress the urge to lunge in hostile irritation—but then, I forget just why I'm angry at all.

The puking, I want to say, the puking is a _bad_ sign.

But he reads my mind.

"With a beam to the noggin like that? You're gonna be a little—ah…" He pauses and glances around for the right word, turning the mechanical toothbrush on and off, "—nauseous, disoriented and _confusified_ for a good 'nother week or so."

He spins the head of the thing in reverse, and forward, idle and fascinated. It even makes little race-car, revving sounds.

My legs feel like spaghetti, and my entire body shakes with the need to regain my senses back to full throttle. I admire, though, that despite my 'incident' (see: disaster) all over this room, it seems pretty well cleaned. No traces of blood or, as I _would_ have expected, vials full of _my_ blood sitting around anywhere.

Then again, I'm sure he's _got_ to have some of it around, somewhere, for his own…personal pleasure.

There's a dull beep of a sound, and like Batman is nipping at his heels, he bolts out of there and into the kitchen. All I hear is the music—

_Unos, dos, tres, catorce..!_

Coincidentally, the minute that line ends, I yet again toss my cookies. It's all literal, too, but I can't remember what I ate yesterday besides a bag of Milanos. My muscles spasm and give out, and I hit the floor with a bit of a bounce. My entire body feels lighter than air.

When I fall away, and not of my own accord, it's to the melodic sounds of Bono.

_Lights go down, it's dark, the jungle is your head, can't rule your heart…_

Fast forward an indeterminable amount of time (see: forever).

I'm back in bed again and crammed under the blankets. Next to me, on the nightstand, there's a piece of toast, and atop it are two eggs that make eyes and a bacon-mouth that attempts for a good ol' fashioned smiley face. I'm reminded of _The Brave Little Toaster._

"Boy-_yee_, you're more trouble than you're worth. How'd ya manage to black out _again_ right after wakin' up? Gotta gift for it or something? If getting into accidental trouble was a major in college, you'd graduate _val-lee-dick-tore-ree-ehn,_ I promise you that much."

Fuck you, is what I want to say.

But all that happens to come out is, "I swear to G-God, if I'm _pregnant."_

And the slip of the tongue makes his eyebrow arch straight up.

And, in a synchronized fashion, we both go stark-pale.


	2. Ultimatum

In a state of obnoxious delirium I find myself lying on the too-small-for-two-people bed, Cleave's head resting pleasantly on my stomach. It's in this moment that we're both way too human, choked by the silence.

"My head feels like it's going to fucking explode."

"I wouldn't mind a tyke, you know. I'm rather—ah, fond of the little hellions."

"You're not seriously contemplating bringing this child into the world. You _have_ to be kidding me."

I strain to recall when I even _agreed_ to have sex with him.

_And it's been awhile…since I could…hold my head up high…and it's been awhile…since I first saw you…and it's been awhile….since I could stand on my own two feet again, and it's been awhile since I could call you…_

The iPod, the iPod that never turns off blares from its speakers. I wonder if God plans out shuffle to match with my life, but I contemplate that thought for a few minutes.

"Well, why-uh not?"

I don't even want to answer that. Why not? Because I don't want to bear his clown-babies? Because I'd like to take a shot at not being an unfairly pregnant twenty-seven year old with a kid who I don't want to deal with? Because I don't feel like producing the spawn from an encounter I didn't even _want?_

It's funny, how physical contact unintentionally brings one person closer to another, whether they want it or not. It's sort of like he feels more like my mate, by this point, because of—yeah, the questionable sex (I'm convinced it'd be an insult to call it anything to the effect of 'love-making'). Half of him hangs off the bed, his hands folded at his stomach, his feet flat on the floor. His toes wiggle in that fidgety way of his.

"It's so easy for you, isn't it? To live y-your freak life. It's so easy for you to forget all your fucking attachments and just blissfully go on with it, happily play the king while I play the pawn. It's so easy for you to just flounce on without the thought of the fucking _magnitude _of what you're suggesting."

"Oh, pu-_lease_, Harvey, do enlighten me with your in-fi-nite wisdom."

If I had the energy, I'd throw him off me and incredulously go around illustrating my rage. I'd throw things, I'd kick him in the fucking face and make him realize the _horribly_ claustrophobic concept he's just dropping on me.

Oh yeah, Harvey, you basically have no choice. Have my freak-child.

"You're _asking_ me to _have your kids."_

"Kid-_uh._ Twins don't—ah, run in my family." I raise my eyebrow skeptically, and I feel my nostrils flare like a fucking dragon. I don't really think that shit is the point, Cleveland, I think the point is _worlds_ larger than that.

I wonder if he's selfish or dense. I don't think I've ever let myself get this angry with him, but it's coming. I can feel it, like a searing, bubbling sensation in my throat.

"Cleave, take a second to fucking _think_ about what you're saying."

"Well, last I checked, ol' Harv, I ain't carrying the plague and you're not my sister, so I can't really see why—"

"_No!_ Fucking—_no!"_ My outburst that adds onto me trying to spring up from the bed is only stopped by his swift semi-smack, and the collision of his palm with my chest. He pushes me back down with the most ridiculous ease, and I really hate when he gets defensive. His defensive equals my claustrophobia. All in all, it doesn't end off all too well.

"Wouldn't suggest an abortion clinic, Harvs, unless, of course, you'd want the—" I listen to the jackal drag of his tone, and something flicks into my field of vision. It waves teasingly in the air, Cleave's form still lax, the shiny instrument of pure destruction snugly fit into his thin fingers, "—the—ah, _home_ remedy."

"You wo-wouldn't have the _nerve."_

"Oh? I _wouldn't_, now, would I, girly?" I feel the cold press against my skin, running in sleek lines up and down. The feel of it is completely terrifying, and it grows so cold that my muscles flinch beneath it. I recognize it as nothing more than an oversized pocket-knife. He's a surgeon, nonetheless, I'm sure, "Don't _ever_ say I would—ah—_not_, girly."

His eyes stay stuck to the ceiling, but his fingers, the ones not clutching death itself, reach up to stroke at my thigh softly and in the dark he growls, "Just because I don't _wanna_ don't mean I _wouldn't_, sweetheart."

The knife grows a bit more malicious, presses a little deeper. I almost squirm beneath it, but I'm desensitized and shivering and numb to the pain hidden beneath the frost. I know how to play his game. Stay quiet, stay dead, play opossum long enough and he gets frustrated. When he doesn't have a game to play, he won't play at all.

And he takes _shots_ at my intellect so often. I've outwitted him—no, I've _matched_ him.

"Can you at least...let me _think _about it, you fuck-ass?"

The knife stops, and with a flick retreats back into its sheath. His hand withdraws, but his other keeps twiddling with my leg, fascinated by the skin.

"Well, let's see, now—ah, I don't remember saying you had to figure it out _right here on the spot_ or I'd dice you into fleshy pieces and cook you into this fine _eve-uh-ning's_ chicken katchitori currently baking within the confines of the oven."

Is that the smell I've been catching all afternoon? I assess it casually with a curiosity undoubted, since he always has the ability to move my mind to other places. Like places that don't involve the child of Satan currently developing within me.

"You really are such a freak."

I'm still convinced he took advantage of my 'injury', or just plain raped me. But I've learned, with Cleveland, anything is _really _possible, so the benefit of the doubt is a requirement. Or else, I'd be throwing accusations at him by now.

"Fuh-_reeeeak_ is such a strong word, Harvey-cakes," He flips right off of me and tucks his chin atop my belly, his eyebrows risen innocently. His entire expression is playfully tremendous, and he burrows his cheek in such a way that I can feel his need for a razor against the pale-blonde stubble growing there, "I prefer _abby-normal."_


	3. Because the Night

Welcome to chapter three, my lovelies! :D Harvey's life is pretty unsuitable by this point. Clown-babies don't sound like too much fun. And, for the record, ala **Teenage.Anomaly** (just to get back to you, my friend, figured I'd answer your query), the vomiting is a concussion symptom, but Harvey's a jump-the-gun kind of girl and Cleave's not the brightest light bulb in the box. Hence, they're both chickens without heads. And **Dancing-Pinky-Flower** wins the grand prize for catching my Young Frankenstein reference! I love, love, love that movie…musical. Anyway! On with the show!

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I sit at the kitchen table and Cleave tells me I look like a zombie. From where my inner self lies, Cleave behind a window tells me I look like a zombie, and the reflection of Cleave tells me I look like a zombie. It's some Alice and Wonderland shit goin' on. My brain warps painfully.

"You look like a zombie, Harv-uh-cakes."

"You don't have to say it twice, Cleave."

His face screws into this pouty confusion, his nose wrinkled. He just says slowly, like _I'm _the one weirding _him_ out, "Only said it—ah…once."

"Well, I don't think you need to say it at all."

I drop my hand to my forehead and feel at the cloth bandaging wrapped around there. For someone who commonly prefers to slit people's throats, he's surprisingly precise when it comes to clean-up. I somehow assume that, if he hadn't turned to his dastardly career, he'd make a pretty dandy doctor.

"Ya know, you—" he pauses, and presses a finger into my nose. He makes the bicycle-horn-beep he mimics so well, like that guy from Police Academy, "—_you _shouldn't be outta the sack, missy."

I swat the hand off and scowl. When I smack, it leaves a trail of psychedelic colors where my hand motioned, "You shouldn't be touching me."

"Wasn't what you were a-sayin' last night, Har-vuh-_ee._"

For a reason I can't quite understand, I slam my fist at the table, but I don't really focus on it. It's just kind of an angry gesture without a purpose behind it. I stare at my hand for a few passing moments. The clock on the wall (circa Felix the cat, with the swinging tail) sounds abnormally loud.

_I work all day out in the hot sun…stay with me now 'til the mornin' comes…come on now try to understand, the way I feel when I'm in your hands…take me now as the sun descends, they can't hurt you now…_

I point accusingly at the iPod speakers and shriek out at the very tippy-top of my lungs, "YOU'RE SO FUCKING WRONG!"

The iPod doesn't answer me. Cleveland doesn't say a word. My own electronic device has turned against me. Even _that_ is on his side.

"_Oooo-_kay. Someone's goin' back to nani nani, I think." He wraps a hand around my shoulder, and when I jerk he applies enough pressure to make me squirm and squeal pitifully. I'm too busy flailing to care, but he whirls the chair so I'm facing him and squeezes both my shoulders at once, "Lookie here, tex, either you go—ah, nap-nap, or I introduce you to Mister Five Milligram Valium. And he's just so plain _eager_ to meet ya."

So apparently he's now threatening me with pharmaceuticals.

Isn't this just the most wonderful relationship?

I feel like a prisoner when he takes me by the wrists and hoists me up from the chair, walking me backward (slowly, slowly, so slowly) into the next room to set me on the bed. I wonder if I'm suffering from the world's most severe case of Stockholm syndrome.

In literary terms, I feel like a small version of big, dumb Lennie and Cleave's the big version of scrawny, smart George. Our roles are reversed, but he's still bright and I'm still so terribly dim.

"Look, toots, I'll even bring ya din-din—that is, providing I do not create a cat-ee-oh-stroh-phic fire of epic proportions in the kitchen. Or does the queen have some other request? Keep in mind, some requests can be filled by my _little buddies."_

I think I imagine the sound of a knife flick, but my blank stare doesn't register the threat. They're all vacant ones, anyway.

Empty-headed and zombified, I mutter, "Chicken katchitori will do fine."


	4. Tally Me Banana

_If I was invisible…then I could just watch you in your room...If I was invincible…I'd make you mine tonight…_

I swear, in all honesty, that is what wakes me. This…_horrible_ noise comes from within the cavern (see: kitchen) and I can't help but wonder if, deep down in Cleave, there's a lover-boy just clawing to get out. Then again, if that lover-boy abides by Clay Aiken, we have a serious problem. Couldn't he be the Bon Jovi lover-boy type—or even better, the Frankie Valli lover-boy type? Come on, not even just the Billy Joel type?

I pick my head up off the pillow and touch at the bandages lazily, flinching away from the stab of discomfort in my stomach. I think his chicken katchitori's repeating on me.

And something tickles unpleasantly, until I yank something hot pink off my face. It's a post-it, just a post-it, and in Cleave's elegant though loopy handwriting it reads 'Hey there, pretty bird'.

His affinity with that nickname is beyond me.

"Cleave!?" I yowl lethargically, and my only answer (strangely enough, from what sounds like _underground) _is "If I was invisible, then I could just watch you in your rooooom! If I was invincible, I'd make you _miiiine_ tonight!"

I almost fall out of the bed when I glance over and yes, oh yes, there's Cleave! He's lying across the bottom, his hands folded over his chest, bopping and singing along to the beat excitedly. His head's flat on the floor, and on the other side of the bed his toes curl and wiggle.

"…Why are you _down_ there?"

"I figured-uh…that…in case you decide to _misssss_behave, I can see you plenty fine from down here and make—ah damn sure you don't go a-wanderin' around. Or standin' in front of the wind-duh-ows. You know, things of the like."

Basically, he's keeping me under his own form of house arrest.

In another world, in another universe, this is sweet.

"I'm gonna need to toss my cookies in a few, Cleave."

"Got no more cookies left for that Olympic sport. You offed the malomars without me_rrrr_cy."

Watching him squiggle out from under that bed is like watching a demented crab do a human-walk. That's the best way I can describe it. It's sick, how flexible he is. It's just completely _wrong. _When he bangs his knees accidentally against the frame, he just lets out a few asthmatic-sounding giggles and then finally claws out, grinning from ear to ear.

"Please, don't mention food. I think after ch-chicken katchi-no, my stomach's retreated into hibernation."

His face falls, but the false dimples (see: the scars on his once-pretty face) relentlessly twitch. Like they're trying to keep up a smile even without one there.

"Ya know, I slave over sticking take-out in an oven and this—_this_ is the thanks I get."

His hands move too much when he talks, and watching them is enough to make me suitably dizzy. I let out a slight howl of a pitiful sound, and note that he's standing in front of me calmly, his thumbs hooked at the waistline of his boxers.

The sounds of Clay Aiden drone into the background, and my luck just keeps getting better. My iPod blares back in to the sound of an upbeat Calypso tune, and my face scrunches into a brief confusion.

_Work all night on a drink o' rum…daylight come an' me wan' go home…stock banana 'til de mornin' sun…daylight come an' me wan' go home…_

I can't help it. It's a snort of a sound, a half-laugh, a semi-high pitched sound and he suddenly stands perfectly straight, like some half-baked admiral has called him to attention. Without the restraint of the kohl, his eyes aren't as bright, but the unforgivably deep green is suddenly aflame. His lips curl so far upward that his smile crawls in and out of his ears.

For some reason, _Day-o_ is one of the few songs that has the power to (somehow) make me laugh. Then again, I usually laugh at inappropriate times (see: my cousin's funeral).

If I had a real therapist, one who wasn't Cleave, he'd tell me it's my method to cope with anxiety. In the completely worst way.

"What'uhs _thaaaaat, _Harvey-cakes?"

He's exploding with the chance to comment.

"There was a tickle in my throat. Did I mention that I need to go vomit again? Because I really feel like I—"

"Laughter is the best medicine, _toots."_

I chew my lip thoughtfully and stare at the wall covered in shag carpeting. It's a classic hippie-pad, complete with endless, fluffy goodness. You can lean against the wall and still fall asleep.

_You gotta unwind, Harv,_ the voice of every ex-boyfriend taunts me, _You're too __**serious**__ all the time._

Yo, please don't stick a knife in my mouth.

Two of his fingers prod me almost violently in the cheeks, and he squishes them together until I fall victim to fish-face. He makes little gooey baby noises (and I remind myself that no child of mine will hear such things…am I seriously considering this? I'm an ass-hole...) as he prods.

"Hee, ha, ho, ho, hee—" he coos, and when he whirls he begins to lip-sync to _Come, mister tally man, tally me banana._

It's unrestrained. I laugh again.


	5. Tricks and Bricks

I think long and hard when he's done antagonizing me (for laughing! Honestly! Come _on!)_ and finally set myself at his Ikea!desk propped against the wall. My feet don't touch the floor. The seat is a 'Guiness' bar-stool. It's not a suitable chair, and this is not a suitable life.

I scratch things down on a piece of paper and pray to a God I'm still questioning Cleave won't see me. I make two lists, the paper divided down the middle, and to the left it says 'Pros'. To the right, it reads 'Cons'.

I huddle over and start writing. Under 'pros' it reads: 'Nice, always willing to make me laugh, smiles all the time, will clearly get me out of near death situations' and, for good measure, I look around and then write, 'Good sex (?)'.

I'm still working on remembering that last one. Was it so traumatic I blocked it out? If it was, Cleave's in up to his neck. That's break-up material to the max.

The cons section reads a number of things: 'Psychotic murderer, Psychotic murderer, Psychotic murderer, Psychotic murderer, bad moods are dangerous, psychotic murderer'. I chew the rainbow-colored eraser of the pencil and ignore the slight sting at the forefront of my head. The gash at the side doesn't look as repulsive, but it sure as fuck feels like Mario threw a hammer into my brain.

That's a good reason not to bear a child, right? Psychotic murderer?

A child with the genetics of a psychotic murderer. It sounds suitable enough to me, but—

"Joker..." That voice is unmistakable. I freeze up. My spine goes tense. I'm reminded of something Cleave said, something earlier—

"…_don't go a-wanderin' around. Or standin' in front of the wind-duh-ows…."_

I feel like someone dipped me in a tub full of ice water. My skin chills, and I realize—

"Ah ah, now, ah—Battsy, don't make me call the coppers on _yooou."_ His giggle is sporadic, and the sound that follows is a dull thud. I can hear his feet scratching against the wall and, after I've ducked under the desk, I'm panicking.

Why is he so close to here?

He'll see me he'll see me he'll see me…

"—Ivy—" is the only word I catch out of his Bat-mumbles, and Cleave collapses into another fit of subtle laughs. I can hear the expression in his voice. It's wide, arrogant, and I can picture him in my head wiggling his eyebrows and purring in the worst way possible.

"I don't know a ding-dang-_diddly_ about this _Iiiiiivy _you're—ah—a-talkin' about. Why would _I _know anything, anyway?"

"You're always connected, we all know it. You know something.—"He pauses, I hear it in his tone. I shake, "Where's your girl, Joker? Where _is_ she?"

"Buried her in the yard with Lassie, _Bat-cakes._ She wasn't playing nice, so I just had to play naughty."

_I play naughty but—for you, I just might have to play nice…_

His voice makes me break out into gooseflesh, the Bat's. All I can remember is the frail aspect of mortality hanging by a thread, my inability to crawl away, the smell of how close death is when it finally hits you. Minutes, seconds, ticking away. My stomach ties into knots. If he kicks Cleave enough, will he give up the ghost? If he prods harder, will Cleave rat me out?

Why are they outside?

This is so unfair. I've got a handicap. How can I be expected to _do_ anything when my head's throbbing?

Unconsciously, in the betraying part of my brain, I realize I won't be able to consider this baby concept any longer if good ol' Bat-for-brains leaves me bleeding and split wide open on the unforgiving cement. I note that 'Batman' is a con.

After all, being in a relationship with Cleveland also comes with Batman as a bonus accessory.

"Ivy wouldn't bother with him, anyway, she just isn't that kinda _gaaal."_

The next thing I know, he's strutting right in from absolutely nowhere. I stare up with wide, grey eyes from under the desk. I think I've never paled this hard in my entire life.

He kneels down to offer a hand to help me out, and grinning, he speaks, "The walls are full of tricks and bricks and things like clocks that also tick."

Within seconds, from what I swear are brief feet away from our abode, the sound of a tremendous explosion goes off.

And I pale harder.

Is he insane?

Strike that.

Is he _insan__**er**__? _


	6. Man Hating Bitch

When I'm sure the Bat is gone (for good measure, I hide under the window, paranoid as Cleave laughs hysterically) I crawl out helplessly and stare up at him on my hands and knees. He grins in delight. I just want to kill him a billion times over. I totally enjoy being mocked _all the fucking time._

"Ree-lax, toots. Door here leads out to the hallway, brick in the wall outside opens a mech-oh-nism to just _sliiip_ inside. A trick-door, if you—ah—will. The singular most _convenient_ cliché."

I blink, listening to him talk, but the world twists in and out again. I'm not paying any attention, honestly, of any _conscious_ sort. My mouth is dry. I can still feel my pulse blasting like a rabid monkey. Great way to _terrify_ me. I feel his arms slip around my neck, and he presses against my back with the full power of his scraggly body.

"Aw, is my—ah—munchkin scared of _big, bad Battsy?"_

In another world, this mocking is adorable. In the next universe over, where fish fly and birds swim and Hillary Clinton is attractive, his reactions to my fear are cute.

"You would be, too, if he tied you all up and just started taking judo shots at you." My voice is venom. It's the _get-off-me-I'm-warning-you _voice.

"He won't find the trick door. He's got too many cobby-webs in his _ buuuuuh_-rain."

"If he finds it, you're the one taking the judo shots _this_ time."

"If he finds _Ivy_, he's in for it big-uh-time. He'll be donety-done-done, I can purr-romise you that." My eyebrow arches when he lets go.

I curiously pipe up, "Who the h-hell is Ivy?"

His grin is cocky, but his eyebrow twitches. For a few moments, I think he's legitimately annoyed. I can't understand why, though, and I'm timid at asking Cleave questions I know will anger him. It's like inquiring a five year old with one chocolate bar left for a piece. Not only will they refuse, they'll hold a grand tantrum. Not only will Cleave rage, he'll rage _all over me._

"Pamela Is-uh-ley is her name-o. She's a researcher gone _whaaaaack­-_o. Insane in the ol' membrane, I—ah, tell you. Lives down by the—uh…ah, ya know, the docks, where nobody-_uh_ stays. Six-hund-uh-red-and-six-tee-six west Bay Terrace, if my memory serves. She goes by 'Poison Ivy'. She's got a few screws toe-tuh-lee loose. Some kinda quest to—ah, to _save the earth_ or somethin'. I'm all for green-peace, but she's _cuuuuh­-razy."_

_We've got cuuuuuh-razy deals down at Big Al's Volvo emporium!_

I have no clue why that commercial pops into my sick mind the moment I consider the way he says that word. He does remind me of a car-salesman, doesn't he? Cheap suit, big grin, big words. He'd make a great car-guy.

"Got a little villain buddy, Cleave?" I snort back a chuckle. His eyes flicker over. Under the patches and patches of kohl, they flash pure jade.

His tongue is hot, forked, swift. He looks at me with deadly eyes, like he's accusing me of being a complete jack-ass. I think the quip was a little much, especially since it seems like he _can't fucking stand_ this woman. "I'd much rah-_ther_ have a tea party with Bats."

It almost makes me curious as to who this woman is, or why he hates her. I hear him mutter something under his breath. It sounds something akin to, "Man-hating bitch."

Someone's a little bitter?

Is that jealousy in my stomach, this fictional baby, or chicken katchitori gone wrong?

"So she lives right near here?" I'm a little nosy, I will admit, but to know that we're not the only full-on, evil-doing crazies in all of Gotham is a feel-good thought.

"Not too far, no, not at all. The Bat won't have a lick o' luck finding her, but he can believe whatever he wants to. He's got rocks for brains, I firm-uh-ly think."

"Hey, uh—" I pause, and awkwardly think of how to word this. No, that's a lie, I just can't…_squeeze_ it out of my mouth. "Thanks for—saying you buried m-m-m-me in the ya-ya-ya….yard."

His grin leaps to life again. His whole face does.

"Don't mention it, Harv-cakes. A-sides, if'n I lost you, I'd lose my own little guy, too, right? Then I wouldn't have this perty little fam-oh-lee o' mine."


	7. False Realization X Fights

I sit around for hours after falling in and out of sleep. My consciousness lazily wafts from fully there to shatter to bits. I'm too tired to do anything but feel half conscious and consider. In between 'considerations', I scribble down pros and cons to birthing the child of Satan. My forehead twinges. My mood is gradually waning.

Within a good few moments, my temper heightens to super-bitch. My irritation lies in the fact that no matter how hard I force it, I just _cannot remember. _

"_Ho-__kay,__ Harvey-cakes, I'm just gonna make totally sure that you're all jim-dandy with this because—"_

"_Yuh."_

It's all I hear when I shut my eyes. It's my own voice, it's weird, small. I realize that I acquiesced to it, but I remember him like some kind of great, soft beast. I remember shrinking under his hands like a weak child; I remember thinking only one thing in a stupid, foggy haze.

He's my God. Undoubtedly, unquestioningly, I'd let him be my God.

And there's a fire in me that slowly builds. First, it's kind of like a tiny ember, and then it sparks and gets higher and higher. I'm super frustrated by this fact, because—well, because I had sex with him, and _he_ had sex with _me_ after my brains were rattled around in my head.

In what world was that willing?

_Tramps like us...baby we were born to run…_

I've dealt with all of it. The threats on my life, the threats of injury, the bad jokes, the mean jokes, the jokes at my expense, the shots at my ego, the dangerous situations he's _willingly_ put me in.

No. I'm not dealing with it. Not after learning this.

"Hey, Harv-uh-ee, we'll be havin' pizza boy for din-dun and—" He pauses in the doorway. His face falls into a look of confusion, and he points a long, thin finger at the ratty messenger bag I'm throwing things into, "—uh—toots, where you headed out—ah…to?"

For good measure, I force my harpy into my pocket and grit my teeth. I can't believe this. I can't believe he would do something like this. Am I a jack-ass for giving him the benefit of the doubt?

So my voice turns to ice. I sound more sure of myself than I have in years. I wish my third boyfriend would've been given the same treatment.

"I'm—ah—_leaving."_ I reply, and my eyes refuse to find his. If I look up into them, it'll all crash down. Those watery, puppy-dog eyes, those fake eyes. Not the eyes of the famed king of gore, not the eyes of a criminal, human eyes, normal eyes. I refuse it, and instead start to force my three Bruce Springsteen t-shirts and four pairs of jeans into the bag. They hardly fit, and I for my five other t-shirts of various band fames in there.

"Where—ah…where ya leavin' to, Harv? And where…and why ya goin' there?"

If I didn't know him better, I'd say he sounded _nervous._

"So I can g-get away from…_you."_

I almost choke that time. My own anxiety eats at my stomach, and for a second I get so dizzy I can almost cry.

_The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive…everybody's out on the run tonight, but there's no place left to hide…_

"Now—ah—Harvey, why would you wanna do _thaaaat_, sweetness, darling-heart, girly, girly, girly?"

If I didn't know him so much better, I'd say his voice is shaking. His tone is the inevitable; it can change into something so much more vicious. It's waiting to turn on a dime.

"Because you let me make one of the bi-biggest decisions of my life while I was indisposed for your own fucking benefit."

I can feel his heat against my back, but I don't glance. I shake, but I keep packing things. I ignore things. If I don't turn around, I don't have to know he's there.

"You _said yes, Harvey-cakes. _You. Said, and I distinctly remember, it was a 'Yuh'."

"Cleave, I haven't been able to focus on a coherent train of thought _since_ then, you _bastard! _What? Doesn't that _tell_ you something, you _fuck!?_"

I ignore it. He can't stop me, but I whirl so hard I smash into his hip and he almost accidentally moves aside. The messenger bag weighs three tons, and clothes are spilling out heedlessly left and right. I kneel and stuff them back in, frustrated with myself. I wish death upon him. I hope he gets anally violated with a kitchen knife.

I cannot believe him.

You have _got_ to be _kidding_ me.

—_Tramps like us, baby we were born to ru—_

I grab my iPod up from the docking bay and the Boss can roar no more. Cleveland's steps shadow mine, only his big feet stomp so loudly it drowns out the blood rushing through my pounding head.

Outside, it's been snowing for a good hour. Winters in Gotham are merciless, the weather capable of dropping to a sporadic twenty or thirty degrees. The wind howls in a dull whistle and smacks against the dirty, stained windows. I can hear it through the outdated brick.

"Takes two to tango, toots!" He yells after me, and the sound of a crash resounds. I stuff the gun from so long ago into the bag. The steel is still cold and heavy, but the urge to point it disintegrates down to nil. I don't have the guts to, so I just relish the brief, frigid sensation and remember where it goes. It's the catalyst, the singular centerpiece for the rest of my life.

"Takes one to fucking _force the other one to d-do it!"_ I howl, and slam the front door open. It's hardly recognizable, a grey blotch among the rest of the hulking dark.

Snowflakes fall like white-glistened pixies that flutter on the breeze. They dance and grin and wink about in all the worst, irritating ways. I hate how beautiful life is, when everything in it is just about to go wrong. When I hurry down the front steps, something lands with an explosion of white powder and I almost fall over out of surprise. The teddy bear lies motionless in the snow. I hear a voice behind me,

"Come back when ya get yourself a sense of selflessness and a heart from the wizard, ya _bitch!"_

His laugh, that hyena-laugh, dies on the stinging wind. My ears burn from the sensation, and I turn. Harley Quinn falls out of my bag and lands in a red and black heap. The cuddly stuffed animal is warm in my fingers.

"Learn how to act like a _man_ and not a _God-complex'd jerk _and I'll co-come back!"

The door slams. I stop caring in a good two minutes. I just stand there as Harley at my feet dusts over with white grains of winter. I cling to Mister Snookums like a life-line. I wonder miserably if I'll have a little guy or a little girl. I feel sick again.

_Six-hundred-and-sixty-six Bay Terrace._

Next destination.


	8. Red

After about a half an hour it really hits me how fucking cold it is. I'm frigid from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. My teeth almost chatter, but I grind them together securely when it begins. The denim messenger bag is overstuffed, and my head is ripping itself in two moment by moment.

At one point, I stop in the streets and kick the snow up as I walk. It's deserted, empty, and the white crystals of cold scrape along when they backfire at me. I scream as loud as I can. I don't care if the Batman comes.

Six-hundred-and-sixty-six is what I'm looking for. I'm searching high and low (see: an excellent Ah-ha album) and I _still_ can't seem to locate it.

I wonder if blizzards ever end, or if they wait for _just the right moments _to begin.

I wonder if Cleave makes the snow come, in all honesty. I wonder if it's just another one of his nifty powers.

I stuff a headphone in my ear and scroll through my low-battery'd iPod. I search around and stop on the good ol' Boss, dandy Mister Springsteen who's always lifted my spirits. Well, not really, but he's always done an awfully good job of coaxing my thoughts away from my problems.

Suddenly, I notice it, and triumph! Etched into the side of a repulsively dilapidated building, I can see the numbers '666' in utterly decaying gold. I finally manage to locate the stairs and I have a hell of a time climbing them. There are immense piles of snow, snow and more snow. I'm tripping all over myself.

I stop wallowing in my bitter thoughts and return my attention to my iPod. A few clicks, and I ring at what I figure is the doorbell. The microscopic button is hidden along the grey-shaded wall.

_Rosalita, jump a little higher. Senorita, come sit by my fire. I just want to be your love, ain't no lie. Rosalita, you're my stone desire—_

In a swift moment, the door opens and my iPod dies all at once. When I glance up, the Boss' voice fragments and dies, and I shrink a few feet or so. I go from four-foot-ten…to a good two inches tall.

Whatever it is, the tree with fire-red hair stares down at me with that quick flash of emerald and I hear a low, purring voice mutter, "Can I…_help_ you?"

I look up, so quick it's abnormal, and then settle my stare on the ground again. This must be the illustrious Poison Ivy everyone keeps talking about; I assume this from the fact that, neatly in her hands, she cradles a potted plant and seems to be dressed predominately in green skinny jeans. She's taller than a human should be. It makes me feel like I represent the lollipop guild.

"One more time—_how_ can I help you?"

I flinch, and speak in one quick puff of breath. It makes me wheeze. The air is too cold, "You're Poison Ivy I'm Harley Quinn."

"I suppose you're right. It still doesn't answer me as to why you happen to be _here._"

Why I happen to be here? My mind rushes in an alarming mudslide of thoughts, and I fight to keep the main console working. My head pounds. I feel myself going into shut-down, but I keep my vision in focus and choke out nervously, "You're the only person in town I know. And i-i-i-it's either this or—the-the _Batman."_

I swallow an anxiety-ball in my throat the size of a meatball sub. It hurts as it goes down. I feel my stomach bottom out. My nerves grind against each other.

Her pedicure'd toenails are painted a scarlet red, and when I raise my eyes enough to notice a hand at her hip (the skin pale, so very pale), I can see that her fingernails match the coloring. _Red is a good color for you_, _not green,_ I think, _Red should be your name._

"You're the clown's girlfriend."

My nose wrinkles. It's a distasteful look. I hate that word.

"Maybe you're _not_ the clown's girlfriend…wait, let me guess—you're the clown's _ex-girlfriend._"

I nod. The anxiety-ball shrinks. She almost sounds understanding when she sighs and reaches forward to grab at my hand (which is occupied, fiddling with the other), "Come on. If you stand out here any longer, he'll see you, change his mind and drive up on his _uni-cycle."_

My damaged brain wonders what a uni-cycle is. It must be a very unfortunate object.


	9. A Game of Cat and Mouse

When I settle myself awkwardly into an armchair, I notice the inside of the place doesn't at all reflect the outside. Every inch seems delicately decorated in varying shades of dark reds and darker greens (it feels like perpetual Christmas). The place is overflowing with pretty plants and pollens, all of which make me sneeze repeatedly. I cover my mouth, and make an awkward squeak each time. It rattles me right down to my insides.

"There's a blanket on the couch, before you turn into a human icicle. You've still yet to explain you're reasoning for this little visit, but I suppose it'd be rude of me to leave you outside until you do. How do you take your tea?" says the firecracker.

I get up on my feet in a dizzy haze to retrieve the blanket—only to wonder why a green extension of a thing is handing it to me. I take it, and the weird, long vine slithers away. I'm scared, now.

"Doe sugar, jus' a li'l bilk." I sneeze again, cough, and inhale so hard that the freeze-burn shoots to my brain. I flinch, and feel around the cushion to be sure that mysterious, drug-induced vine doesn't creep up again.

"I'll just assume that was cohesive and hope for the right concoction." Her voice is such an unnerving drone of a purr. I find I need the blanket for more than just the cold.

I look around, survey the place carefully. She has excellent tastes, elegant ones, soft ones, and the warm sophistication of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony floats through the air. I don't question the piles and piles of various plants scattered around, and the sad part is that I can identify every one. It's my curse, to know the smallest, most trivial facts. I can pick apart facts; I can tell her every genus of pretty flower, every type of leaf in my sight. It's the same as I know all the populations in all fifty states.

I inhale, so deep it makes me rasp a little, but for the moment my destroyed nose calms down and I can inhale the various, deadly toxins floating through the air. I don't enjoy this place one bit.

After a few minutes of losing me in the folds of her warm, fluffy blanket, the woman with legs for miles and cherry hair emerges. She holds a tray neatly with two little, china cups that are white, decorated with what I know as a blue, Grecian pattern.

"It's chamomile. It's good for your throat, so you don't incidentally eject your lung in this environment." I wonder, curiously, if her sense of humor is as weird as Cleave's. Hastily, I find myself checking my cell phone—

Bitterly, all I can think is _I'm carrying your child, you fuck, the least you can do is send me a text of the 'r u ok?' variety._

"Anytime you'd like to spin me a tale so I can understand your predicament, feel free." Her tea is warm and perfectly heated. It's soothing, since my throat was inevitably burning. I avoid her hotly emerald gaze at all costs, and stifle another sniffle.

"I'm pregnant with his ki-kid, and I left, and I-I—"

"Now I will guess—no, not guess, I will perceive that this pregnancy of yours is not of the most honorable means?" She leans forward, sips at her cup, and I almost spit-fire with a nasty remark before I swallow it hard. I want to back-hand her at that moment, and say that the desecration was enough, but the verbal desecration is just unnecessary. I don't realize her matter-of-fact disposition is the damn truth; she's actually _not_ mocking me.

"If it was honorable I-I-I wouldn't have shoved everything—" I sneeze, so hard I rattle, nearly out of my chair, but catch myself at the arm quickly, "—in dat bag an' left like ah dit."

"You have horrendous allergies."

The look in her eyes says she's up to something. I protectively cuddle around the blanket, embroidered with little vines. It's a forest color. I've always loved green.

"Dawgs-uh, birds, flowers, polle-d," the word 'pollen' doesn't work out so well. This time, I rock forward and then excuse myself, so quickly I realize I'm rambling. My head is clouded with floating stars and the awful sensation dandelions give me behind my eyes when they become too swollen to do a thing with but squint.

"Human contact," She adds in, sarcastically, and reaches for something I don't really see. I shudder, but she picks up before I can go on speaking, "To paraphrase, you need a place to stay because the clown has leapt on your last nerve—or, maybe, you have leapt on his. It's hard to tell, with the way he acts. I wouldn't be surprised if your departure was just from losing tolerance. I couldn't handle that many bad jokes in a single day, let alone an entire relationship. Was the sex highlighted by a whoopee cushion? I'm sure face-paint is thrilling."

This must be why he called her a man-hating bitch.

I find myself almost ecstatic that I'm a female.

"We-Well...I-I…it was…it was…" I choke, so hard, so hard, "It was…bad."

I nervously wriggle around and wonder if I can disappear within the crevices of this material. She's making me feel like Cleave usually does. In a word, nervous. I pause, and question myself mentally. _Was_ the sex bad? I'm still trying to dig up the memories. It…_must_ have been pretty good; the flickers of things I see seem pretty decent.

"In short, you're looking for a place to stay, and this is your only option." She folds her hands just under her chin and her legs cross primly. They're clad in a pair of green denim jeans that cling to her curves. She's perfectly aesthetic in every way. I can't help but feel like the prey just under the hunter's gun.

"Th-Th—" I look up far enough to glance at her red lips. They're glossed, shiny, "This is my only o-option."

"Well," She says, and rakes a nail through her curly, fiery hair, "As soon as you finish that tea, I'll show you to your room."

Those lips, they pull into a smile.


	10. A Kiss

I take my time on the tea because I'm nervous to be anywhere near this woman. It's like her and Cleave have spoken before about the top ways to make Harvey uncomfortable. She seems so much nicer than him, though, and for that I'm relieved. I got a little tired of being yanked around on whatever short leash he decides to keep me on.

By now, my allergies are thoroughly chewing on themselves. Her crimson eyebrow arches, and her lips quirk like something's funny. Of course, I immediately assume she's mocking me.

"Your eyes are gray. That's an interestingly recessive trait."

_Your eyes are gray,_ the amorphous mass of Christmas says, _that's an interestingly recessive trait._

I flinch silently at that fact and nod. I don't know what to say, not a single word. I clam up like it's the only thing I _can _do, in between weakened sniffles and pathetic gasps for breath.

It's not until moments later that my stomach drops to my feet and I realize my teacup is empty. It's an irrational fear, I'm sure, one that would seem stupid to anyone else, but it signifies more of this torturous anxiety. My insides do little back flips. I feel like my vital organs can win an Olympic gold medal for gymnastics.

"Well, Harley, let me—"

I snap up, suddenly. My stomach swims back up to my middle.

"Harvey," I correct, and I notice when I set the saucer down the entire cup is shaking as my fingers struggle to keep a hold. My jaw is doing that thing where it jumps too much, "Not H-Harley."

"Harvey would be your given name, I suppose? What a—"

"_Interesting name for a girl_, I _know."_ My teeth set and grind together, so hard the sound presses harshly against my ears. I feel it in my head, and my joints bunch up into each other. If I was a dragon, my most prevalent power would be to expel thick amounts of bad-ass fire and impenetrable smoke through my nostrils.

"I was _going_ to say fitting first name for you, since it seems, somehow, to settle quite comfortably on you. Not many can pull off a dominantly masculine name. If you'd still like, though, there _is_ still a bedroom for you."

She burns like acid in my skin.

Unconsciously, I check my cell-phone again and curse the God I've been praying to on and off for the past few months. He'd do well to throw a text message my way, by this point, considering I've endured ice, snow, cold, nausea and head injuries for the cirque du freak reject and am now the vessel housing his demon-spawn. Well, I figure, anyway. I haven't thrown up again just yet, but from the feeling sloshing around, it won't be too long 'til I do.

She leads me by the hand without a hitch. Somehow, I'm paying no attention at all as we wind through corridors laced with wildflowers you'd only find in fields and deadly plant-life you'd only cross in the TV show _Land of the Lost._

She's telling me where to go, but I'm not hearing anything. Her proverbial voice bounces off my inner walls, but it's like listening to someone giving a speech through a poor microphone. She mentions something about a bathroom, and shows me into some grandly decorated pad lined in more red velvet and gold trimmings. I'd compliment her taste, but my attention is off.

Next I know, she pulls out a tube of what looks like chap stick and swipes it across her ruby red lips, casually releasing my palm from her own. For a moment, the detachment of contact leaves me bewildered.

That triggers some kind of electrical current to my brain saying _you're on your own, now _and I blink away the remnants of stupidity and dizziness from my eyes. Slowly, I start to boot back up, like a PC who needs to stop collecting dust and function, just for a minute.

There's the contact again. She leans over a little, bends a bit, and two of her fingers, her pointer and middle finger, touch at that spot just where my jawbone ends. It takes me a second to register, but that second passes swiftly as her lips fall to my own and my eyes widen. Every nerve ending in my body screams _FUCK MOTHERFUCKER THERE'S A PRETTY WOMAN KISSING YOU AND YOU'RE PREGNANT._

My hand twitches; goes to rise to stop her, but it falls uselessly to my side and sways like a weak pendulum. My knees give out; my legs turn into putty under me. My back feels the flat, cornered security of the wall, and I shove a little harder against it when I feel her tongue move across my lower lip and my alarms are going off like firecrackers. _Firecrackers like her red hair._

When she pulls away, fingers still touched firmly at the corner of my jaw, I do the first thing that comes to mind.

I start to giggle. It's nervous, endless, and it's some painful way I picked up from Cleave on how to deal with traumatic situations in inappropriate ways.

My limbs turn into play-doh, and all at once there's a glint of emerald and sunset-fire, and it all goes black.

_Red_, I think, and it all slips. I steep into delirium, _Red like blood. Red should be her name._

(An unknown amount of time and confusion later)

It's all a bad dream. That's my first thought, when I'm assaulted with the scents of roses and some kind of silky, warm satin. It's an awful dream and when I wake up I'll be back in my old house, just outside Gotham, complete with my less-than-teetotaler parents. I'll run downstairs with my bag and a pen stabbed into my semi-long, reddish hair, grab the toast off the table and jet to my internship at _The Gotham Weekly_ whose headquarters, interestingly enough, aren't even _within_ the city limits.

But mom isn't screaming at the lotto numbers on our fifty year old television set, and dad isn't thumping a fist at the kitchen table wailing about the gas prices.

Instead, I hear a voice.

"A kiss is a wonderful trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."

I blink hard. I swallow. What?

"Have you listened to yourself sometimes? You ramble remarkably. I could hardly get a word in edgewise."

I feel dizzier and sicker than I can possibly explain. As if the past week hasn't been enough, now I'm struggling to sit up on my elbows, alone.

I must have gone on talking and talking and not have noticed it. I recall in a few flashes of nauseated remembrance the sensation of lips that taste of peppermint (see: candy canes on Christmas) and nails that prick my skin. Suddenly, I feel my eyes widen like dinner plates in my head. She _kissed_ me?!

Without warning, my tongue loosens itself. "What the fuck did you do that for?"

"Do you know the principle definition of the word 'vaccination'? You give a person the smallest dosage of an illness, and it immunizes them to a disease. If a person is vaccinated for the flu, they are _given_ a dash of the illness itself, and this allows the person to develop antibodies against it. You _should_ be immune to me, now, and, as an added bonus, you'll be pleased to find those allergies that plague you so fervently won't be back for a good while."

Her speech goes in one ear and out the other. My dumb look is just followed up by "You _poisoned _me?"

"My, aren't you _quick?_ I'd like you to analyze the nature of my name. _Poison _Ivy. Therefore, I naturally _produce_ poison. It's all very complicated. It's best you don't wrack your brain to understand it. Just comprehend that I've done you a worthy favor—and I needed to find a way to quiet your nervous jittering. Do you have a mental filter, or is it broken?"

"Want to explain w-why I'm nauseous?"

"Pregnancy and an adverse reaction to my little escapade. Your immune system is the poorest I've ever witnessed." Everything about her, I think, is so eloquent-looking. There are ways her eyebrows arch, ways her lips move, ways her hands accentuate her words subtly. Her hair casts ember-shadows across her inhumanly pale flesh. I'm reminded of Buttercup from _The Princess Bride._ I used to love that book.

Pregnancy.

I swallow harder than I did the first time.

This makes it definite, doesn't it?

Glancing up from her little cross-word book, she asks me, "Harvey, what's a five-letter synonym for jester?"

"Prick."


	11. Awkward X It's Just Hormones

I hear myself say the word, but truthfully I regret it. I check my phone again, a constant, furtive habit, searching desperately for messages.

None come. And I feel more alone than I ever have.

Why won't he just fucking _text_ me? Oh, Cleave…

"If you lost the ability to brood, what would you do?" I look up, and Lady Ivy who's too regal to belong in this millennium places a tray at the bed-side table. It's filled with assorted little cookies and that ornate teacup I pay too much attention to. I mutter a thank you and stuff the phone behind my pillow. I don't mention the suicidal thoughts beginning to resurface. I wonder why I never considered medication. "Spontaneously combust?"

Spontaneously combusting sounds like a good plan. I file that away into my drawer of impossible deaths I wouldn't mind occurring.

In dead silence, I realize how awkward I am. I don't say a word, I just stare sullenly into nothing. Ivy almost reads my mind.

"You really don't cope well with things, do you?" She sits down beside where I'm laying I instinctively crawl away a little. I find, once I've moved around, that I squish something cuddly. What is—oh! Mister Snookums! Triumphantly, I clutch him to me and curl up. I've won a small victory. "Or, I'd guess you don't really cope at all."

I sneak an irritated look her way but raise the teacup to my lips and sip it. More of the chamomile stuff? What? Am I running a fever? My head's still healing, what is it, exactly? That little throb in the side of my skull still hurts. It practically burns.

Don't really cope? What does she mean by coping? I think I'm coping just fucking fine, thank you.

--Said Harvey as she almost reached for her cell phone. Nice save, Harv-cakes.

"Did the dizziness stop?" She's prying for conversation that I'm not willing to endorse. I keep my hands clenched in my lap, and my eyes staring dead-downward. My jaw jumps a little. It's an anxious habit. I don't know what to say, but her fingers snap, and my attention directs automatically toward the sound. "You're just _magnificently_ riddled with ADD, aren't you?"

"Not so di-dizzy anymore." The words are more like a dry-heave sentence than an actual one. I force myself to talk. My mouth is dry. I gulp down some temperate (see: OHMYGODHOT) tea and clear my throat again. What do I do by this point?

After the fact that I can recollect her kissing me (see: things that turned me on uncomfortably), it's making it all the harder to choke out or stumble around speech. I'm not okay. In fact, I'm replaying the moment over and over in my head and turning a darker and darker pink with each passing moment. I haven't _wanted_ sex in a _very_ long time, so this is…a revelation, for me.

Hormones.

It's all the hormones.

The pregnancy hormones are making me go insane.

Damn the hormones.

Attracting me to women, now. Shame, shame.

"That can_not_ be normal." Blood-red lips remain in a set smirk. I can't help but think, absently, it's oh-so-attractive. I shake the thoughts from my head like snowflakes out of hair.

Doesn't the idea of karma exist anymore? I haven't been such a bad person, as far as I know my lifestyle warrants karmic retribution. A good night's sleep sans paranoia would do just fine. I roll over, and I hear her odd chuckle of a sound. It sounds halfway dark, raspy, almost masculine. Her voice is lower than the norm for a female, after all.

And I close my eyes.

I have never felt such relief in my life.


	12. Delicate Nerves X Argumentative

_It's dark. It's dark and my skin tingles but I can't see an inch of anything. It's dark and my wrists and my ankles are freezing and there's an infinite expanse of frost beneath my back. A light flicks on, dirty, yellow, and floods the room with little specks of dust that flutter and float around. It moves, but there's nothing there as it effortlessly glides to where I lay. First a pair of iridescent green eyes flicker out, drifting in mid-air, and next to follow is a smile that bleeds from ear to ear. Trickles of blood run between the yellow teeth, a substance that is candy-apple red. It falls in thick, goopy rivulets as creases form where the corners of the mouth should be, and a long, pink tongue darts out to slurp at it like a cat lapping milk. A hand, next, lashes out in a flash and clutches violently at a patch of skin on my exposed stomach. The fingers are long and the nails are curved, and it twists my flesh so painfully that I feel the pressure threatening to pop my skin off. I scream, and the light, all at once, dies._

(Somewhere, back in reality)

"You make a horrible fuss."

I wake up, panting for breath like an overheated dog and gripping at my stomach in the haze of a fever-dream. Once I assess that I'm all in one piece, I manage to haul my gaze over to Ivy. Her calm expression hardly seems right for this moment.

"To sleep, perchance, to dream, hah?" I keep patting at my tummy relentlessly, like I'm checking myself out. Skin. I have to be sure my skin is still all here. I touch behind my ears, at my still-healing forehead, at my sides and my lips and every inch of me.

Hey, Harvey?

Yeah, self?

You're all there.

Sure, self.

A vine slithers out of nowhere (see: I successfully almost jump _out of_ my skin) and holds out (or so it seems…) a cup of something. I drink it, all shaking and trembling, and find that it's some kind of tea again. This one tastes different, though, this one's sort of minty. The air hangs with the sounds of chamber music. It sounds like a piece from Mozart's _Magic Flute _opera. It's pretty, kind of uplifting, but not enough to range out of comfortable.

_I've got the stuff that you want, I've got the thing that you need. I've got more than enough to make you drop to your knees. 'Cause I'm the queen of the night, queen of the night, oh yeah…_

My iPod's alarm goes off like crazy and I almost (_again)_ leap out of my flesh. I forget that I set it for certain times according to when I was used to having to avoid Cleave, I just happen to forget that it's on shuffle.

In a moment of embarrassing clarity, I swear I can mentally fantasize her doing a striptease to _Queen of the Night._ This awkward, sexually confused moment bought to you by Whitney Houston.

In a fit of absolute sadness and hyperventilating panic, I realize how badly I miss my Bobby Brown.

Only problem is, the moment I go to look at my cell phone she swipes the thing up from the table beside the bed and shoots me a look that could make mountains crumble in on themselves.

"Is it because you're a masochist, and you enjoy it, or is it because you're a fool, and can't escape from it?" I stare into the wall intently as if to avoid the shamed 'What do you mean?' about to escape my oh-so-articulate mouth.

Instead, I do the second worst thing. I just shake my head. Dumb, fucking _dumb_, Harvey.

"Freud believed dreams were a perfect window into the psyche. Would you mind sharing? Who knows, maybe you can learn—"

"Listen, fuck off."

I regret it the minute it rolls out of my mouth. It's cold as anything, but I'm so sick of being prodded like her prized human experiment. She looks hurt, or I think she does, for a split few seconds, but the expression dies into one that seems to range from numb to bitch.

"Perhaps you _are_ impossible to deal with."

I stare at her back as she retreats out the open door, and the spiteful vine that handed me the tea slams it behind her.

She has a gorgeous back.


	13. When I Think About You

I'm swearing him off.

I'm shedding him, my second skin. I'm getting rid of him. I'm detox-ing myself from him. I'm ignoring him. I'm forgetting about him. I'm demanding I let go.

_Demanding._

_You're the cause of all of this, and I'm sick of trying to please you. And you're gonna feel my emotions coming, 'cause you're the world._

I stare at my iPod with a hateful, slow anger and hold down the play button swiftly. It needs to shut up. The haphazard songs stuffed there are infuriating, especially the ones that remind me of Cleave (because the jerk _put_ them there).

"How did you manage to fall in love with a _clown?_" I hate how nonchalant she is about questions. She just breezes in (after brooding angrily over my earlier statements) and casually hands me a tray that contains some kind of chicken and another cup of tea. I could really use some Mountain Dew right about now.

"I didn't."

I avoid her gaze completely.

"This is type-one heartbreak behavior, Miss Harvey."

"Do you ever learn to keep your nose out of my f-fucking business, Ivy?" I stare solidly at her, but I feel more tired than humanly possible. She senses it, and lacks the defensiveness of moments ago. She looks at me like she's the lioness and I'm the antelope, all wounded and bloody and ready to be slaughtered.

Beep. My phone's low sound resonates at me, and my interest piques within seconds—until I realize that it's only the low battery warning. Curses! Foiled again.

"You are aware of how pitiful you act, correct? You're like a puppy waiting for your master to come trotting in the front door."

I scowl at her, and I can't help but feel a sudden surge of revulsion for myself. I chalk it all up to those stupid pregnancy hormones. The hormones are at fault for every mistake I make.

My brief undressing her with my eyes; still the hormones.

"Do you intend on answering anytime soon?"

Do I? My mouth doesn't move with my mind, and suddenly my iPod begins to play.

_I don't want anybody else, when I think about you I touch myself…_

Without warning, I snatch it up and it goes _flying_ across the room. A vine catches it, but the headphones disconnect and I listen to the dull thud of my heartbeat in the silence. I'm wide-eyed and stupefied, and unwilling to recognize that my ears are hot under my cherry-red blush. My headphones lie in the middle of the floor, neglected and depressed (see: share my attitude) and the long, green extension of where-the-fuck-did-that-come-from? vine still cradles my iPod.

Immediately, I grip the sheets under me and stare at my fingers, trying to make my slightly-long hair fall over my eyes. I let my glasses tilt down until I can't see half my vision anymore, and my throat swells and tightens and chokes enough that fat letters can't squeeze out, but skinny breaths can.

I don't look up, but I hear her laughing at me quietly. I don't acknowledge when she leans forward and her slender, fiery eyebrows slide upward cheekily. My mouth is dry. My eyes sting vaguely. My tongue feels like it blocks my windpipe completely.

"Are you purposefully this awkward, or does it come naturally to you? Because for you, this anxiety seems to be almost an art."

My fingers curl inward. My knuckles crack. If I bite my lip any harder, a thin, horrible line of blood will trickle and stain her soft, goddess-sheets.

The sound of silence deafens me.


	14. Super Villains Grocery Shop Too

I'm woken up at what the red digital-clock in the distance declares is 4:30 am. When I'm roused, I blearily blink my eyes and groggily lift my head from the pillow. Slight spots of red blot the fabric and I furtively touch at where my temple is with another groan. Someone's shaking me. I grunt that they should fuck off, as soon as possible.

"Arise, impossible creature." In the barely-morning light, her voice is more sultry than humanly possible. Or it could be my extreme yearning for sex and the quality of her tone. It makes me immediately uncomfortable in my Aerosmith t-shirt and pajama bottoms that bear tiny, artful purple llamas.

"Whaddya mean ah wake up?" I grumble unintelligibly. It takes me a minute to realize how truly stupid I sound.

"We need to go shopping, Harvey."

"Fuck'uhself."

I roll over, yank the pillow over my head and let out a low, continuous moan of discomfort. She strips of my sanity and my security. The sheets are ripped away, and I'm left cold and defenseless. Her grip (see: vice) yanks the pillow from me and there I am, in a pitiful heap, groaning for peace.

"You have thorough suicidal tendencies. If you think I'm leaving you here in solitude you're mad." I moan again. How badly I just want some time to myself, how _very_ badly...I hate that everyone keeps me on perpetual watch. Just remove all pointy objects! That usually works out. "You don't even have to change, just get out of bed."

(Fifteen excruciating minutes later)

"There. I-I'm here. Happy?" I'm an extremely unpleasant person in the morning. The clock glares 4:53 at me. I can't help but blurt, "Why the fuck are we shopping at 5 in the morning?"

"We're super-villains. Super-villains do not simply purchase things in broad daylight with millions of civilians milling about who may potentially recognize them."

Potentially recognize them? I blink sleepily at her, and squint until she becomes a mass of obnoxious red. I'm still clutching Mister Snuggles (By now, his name is a distant recollection after a jab to the head) and staring through her over the rims of my glasses. What I think is her mouth opens again.

"Super-villains who, I may add, have their pregnant selves potentially recognized."

I would roll my eyes if I were focusing. I'm convinced, though, and when I make no move forward with my iPod securely in my pocket she finally takes my hand and pulls me forward. It's warm and soft and she throws her jacket (which is quite big on me) around my shoulders, explaining that I am likely far more susceptible to cold than she is. It smells like her, I notice, much to my own embarrassment. Like safety and carnations.

"You own a pink Cadillac…"

She's shameless as my life is long.

"Leave Rosebud alone."

It's my turn, now. My eyebrow shoots straight up, "You own a _pink Cadillac convertible_ named_ Rosebud._ Aren't you _embarrassed?"_

She shakes her head and (bad-ass style, of course) hops into the driver's seat, patting the passenger's side with a casual glance. My throat does that thing again where it tightens up, and I find myself thankful that my cigarettes and shiny zippo lighter are in the pocket of these pajamas. In awhile, I will badly need all the courage I can muster. I dry-heave half a swallow and my shaking fingers pull open the door .When I hop in the seat, I press myself against the window like a terrified cat as far from her as I can.

"So desperately awkward," She chirps, and we're serenaded by the King as her CD player drones to life. _Heartbreak Hotel_ begins, and she turns a smug smirk my way, but says nothing as she backs out of the concealed driveway.

I do not move.

(An undetermined amount of time later, as Ivy's car-clock has been beeping 9:00 for a good 10 minutes or so)

In my fluffy, chocolate-brown slippers and entirely unacceptable sleep-wear, I trudge into Wal-mart with the Amazon Queen at my side. She's surveying the empty aisles like a raptor. I see no employees around. Her head swivels expertly side to side. She is a seasoned professional at this game, is what I most assume.

I suck my thumb discreetly behind her, just so she doesn't notice. My chest feels knotted, tight. I'm looking around frightfully and realizing that it's been a solid week or so since I've been out of the confines of a domestic residence. The familiar weight in my stomach returns at full force; I remember how frightened I am of public situations. She doesn't look back at me just yet, only picks up a box of Cheez-its and examines the back. I have the urge to be conversational; to open my mouth and tell her I like white cheddar or that under the fluorescent Wal-mart lights she has the softest crimson halo.

I do neither of those things. I stand there, frozen in place to the dirty, white tiles. My eyes are wide, and I only gape. I can't even propel myself forward.

"It's helpful if, when seeking out things to purchase, my housemate hints toward her own enjoyments and dislikes."

I feel like an asthmatic. I'm halfway to hyperventilating.

She _wants_ me to talk.

I react in the most comprehensive way possible.

"I n-need a cigarette."

And I rush outside faster than humanly possible. The only problem is, when I turn the hall, it's not outside I get to. A door clicks open, someone pulls me inside and in the dank, resounding, steel-smelling darkness a hot hand presses against my mouth and someone's whiskey-ridden breath hisses, "Oh, bad, _baaaaad_ girly."

My back hits a wall, both figuratively and literally, and my pupils expand and contract frantically in the dark. I rattle against his grip, but it's completely worthless. His palm digs into my face, and his other hand pushes my chest so hard that the door forces against the hinges and my heart throws itself in a desperate dance against my ribcage. I squint, but see nothing.

It's so dark.

"Naughty little _Harv-uh-ee."_


	15. Regress

"_Naughty little __Harv-uh-ee."_

The malice I once had for him, the violent anger, the insanity, it's gone. I can't bring myself to scream at him. All the nerve I had to fight back has shrunken into a small corner and is now cowering alongside me.

"Oh, Har-_vee." _I flinch away and claw at the door behind me. He's easily lifted me off the ground, letting me flounder and paw as he presses me, pinned, to the wall. I'm floundering, I'm panicking, I can't breathe. His puppy-dog eyes are jade hellfire and they glitter in the dark. I can see puddles of black behind him that shine faintly in the almost-morning sun. A slipper drops. He licks his lips. "Don't you close your eyes, you hear-uh me? Ah—don't _you do that_, Harvey, I'm not your _daaaaaaddy."_

No. He's not my father. But none of this helps, none of it. I feel my insides churn terribly. I feel nauseous again.

He smells like so many varieties of alcohol that it burns. Vodka, but whiskey, lots and lots of whiskey.

Nice going, Harvey, you pushed him to drinking in the am hours.

Why do I always think it's my fault? Every single time?

"Shacked up with ol' Red, didja, backstabbin' slut?" His grin is poisonous. I realize, this time, he _intends_ to hurt me. This time he's going for it. This time, he doesn't care.

You're drunk, I want to say, but it doesn't come out. You're _smashed_ because I know you'd never scare me like this. You love me more than _this_, I think.

"I-I-I di—"

Flick. A thread of moonlight snaps across my neck and the old switchblade forces against my flesh. I can feel my breaths quickening, and I kick harder against the door, only the insubstantial thumps are hardly enough to resound throughout an entire supermarket.

I beg to that God again, that imaginary God I keep running to who seems to have switched me to noises off.

The knife! _The knife's in my pocket!_

I go for it, swift, and my shaking hand flicks the harpy outward. His eyes widen, but his face cracks into a smile so big I fear his cheeks will split. His eyebrows threaten to push off of his skin. I realize, with a mixture of horror and heartbreak that he's _not wearing his makeup._

"Ya'd do it, wouldn't ya? Ya'd take my life even after I—ah, after _I _let you out of your _cage!"_ He pushes me a little harder and, suddenly, I can feel his wolf-breath against my ear, "You're turnin' me on, Harvs, that's a _baaaad_ little idea."

Unfortunately, I can feel the evidence of that statement pushing against my thigh. My stomach drops. The knife clatters out of my grip and his draws a thin, blood-red line.

Which reminds me of the fact that I can feel his harsh, warm hand fiddling with my pajama pants. He shoves himself harder against me, and I feel his forehead fall there as his eyes narrow. For a second, there's some kind of warmth there when he murmurs, "Quiet an' still, Harv, quiet and _still."_

None of those words help the fact that there's an unequalled stab of pain in my abdomen and my head rolls against the door. I hate him more than I ever have in that moment. His palm presses against the side of my face. The minutes go by before I'm spent and, just like that, he drops me, my every muscle twitching.

Gasping for breath doesn't exactly help this moment.

I practically curl up on the floor, whimpering like a dog who's been kicked. How many inches tall do I feel right now?

Maybe two. I'm giving myself too much credit. Maybe one inch tall.

"Why'd ya gotta do that, Harv?" I flicker my stare around and around but the world's spinning and _how did he find me and why did he find me and why did he do this just when I was damn fucking sure I was in love with him?_

Oh God, my insides hurt.

This feeling is painful.

Ever feel horrifically infected?

He shrugs on his purple coat when my vision shrinks and warps and turns around so violently that I assess I've been thrown off earth itself. This is hyper-space. Soon, Ziggy Stardust will come hang out with me.

"Yer not done with me, ol' Harv-cakes, not by a long shot."

I'm not done with him. Not by a long shot? I breathe too quickly for it to be normal, and when I crawl to my feet I feel his hand on my shoulder to steady and I can't help but swiftly ask myself if he's bipolar where after what I assume was somewhere between raping me and ripping my insides out he wants to _help _me.

He still reeks of vodka. It transforms into scotch.

Everything feels unfocused.

The door opens again, and I'm shoved outside with enough ferocity to keep me on my feet, but not enough to make me dizzy. I stumble back to where I was. My knees feel like jelly. My eyes almost roll back into my head.

I hear some distant voice yell, "Bagel with cream cheese or butter?!"

I see a flash of red.

The ground rushes up to meet me.

Clean up in aisle one.

Smash.


	16. Numb a Pain

Normal people don't faint from trauma. I realize this when, slowly, I manage to come around. Normal people can stay awake for more than ten minutes. I am not normal people.

My eyes open and the first sight I come to is Ivy's car ceiling. The seat under me drones and vibrates with a dull hum. There are bunches of bags scattered at my feet and I roll to my side, pressing my back against the seat. The scenery glides by contentedly. The sky is pink after the short sunrise. I feel sick to my stomach. I feel diseased in some way. There's an unavoidable sting between my legs, and I must be as grey as a cloudy day.

Ivy breaks my suicidal quiet. "I shouldn't have allowed you to go off on your own."

I panic again behind the silence. She knows what happened. She knows and now she's going to kill him. Why am I still protecting this person? Because whoever that was back there, it wasn't him. Not by a long-shot.

"_Yer not done with me, ol' Harv-cakes, not by a long shot."_

My eyes flinch shut. I croak, "I-Ivy, will you hurt me if I puke on your leather seats?"

"Of course not, sweetheart."

I don't do it, but I contemplate it. I feel too guilty to fuck up her car. She makes me nervous. I can _feel_ the heat radiating off of her. She's angry. So very angry. I break under the pressure and my voice shakes, "I'm fucking freaked o-o-out, Ivy."

I begin to feel like the chick to her mother hen. The comedy of moments ago where I was shyly avoiding contact is gone. I want it, now. I'm scared. I want to be protected. Is this all it takes to push me out of my trust issues?

"I knew I smelled clown. I knew I shouldn't have—"

"Ivy?"

Silence again. I just want her anger to stop. It's making my thought process do self-deprecating flip-flops. I focus harshly on the Cheez-it box. For some odd reason my heart breaks when I realize they're white cheddar. White cheddar is my favorite. Is it a sign from the God who doesn't enjoy listening to me? I feel like a breathing bundle of nerves. Watching that ten year old die didn't add up to the same sensation as this. My emptiness is gaping, now, Grand Canyon sized.

"I apologize," She murmurs bitterly, "I'm just—"

Badly tempered? Vivacious? Raging? Overprotective?

It doesn't help my self-disgust when I realize she's angry at herself for not looking after _me._ Let's lower my ego a good three thousand points, shall we?

It's all bubbling up inside me. I feel it, it kind of burns, to be honest. I loved him, and I love him but he's an asshole and I'm, undoubtedly, just as much of a jerk. I deserve it and he deserves to have his nose broken and we both deserve such suffering. We deserve pain beyond pain.

I hate how much I miss him most of all. I hate how much I want him even though I know it's wrong, worse, it's _bad for me._ I hate everything, right at this terrible moment.

"We'll get you home and you'll be alright, or as alright as is manageable."

Inwardly, I crack a sour joke about the way she says _home._ She says it like I _belong_ there, and a part of me gives a hateful little lurch of irritation for that. I lost my home; I'm still looking for it.

I mentally tell myself to stop sitting around and thinking up ways to hate her, because she's the last person in the world I have right now (wow, nice, Harvey, cut down to a _single_ person) and I can't afford to despise her. I can't let myself sit here and create ways to spit venom at her just because it's in my nature to wish death to all human beings. My trust issues resurface. Unfortunately, I don't follow.

"I'd prefer it, right now, in the least demanding way, if you'd share your thoughts rather than stew on them. It reminds me that you're not dead in my backseat."

"Listen, fuck off. I'm trying to assess whether I can deal with y-y-you or not. Everyone I've tried to d-deal with only ends up raping me or taking all my money."

A little hard there, Harvey, maybe you cann_ot_ be such a beast.

"Rest assured, I have no desire to force sexual escapades on you, and I'm not interested in your money…provided, that is, you even have any at all. Money is—"

Blah blah ecology rant. I tune it out completely. The car's steady, straightforward motion lulls me to calm.

I feel adrift on an unforgiving sea.


	17. Close Your Eyes

I guess I've gotten a little dark, by this point. XD I'm writing this in the middle of English composition class and I'd like to say thank you so much for the reviews, the entire lot of you. I'm enjoying this fanfic way too much for it to be normal, but bah! I haven't enjoyed writing this much in awhile. Anyway, thanks again for all your feedback. Cleave's going through some…problems, you could say. Honestly, I, myself, am curious about how he'll react to what he did. I don't think even the great Joker himself could cope easily with something like _that._ Anyway, onto the Harvey/Ivy slash! On with the show!

XxXxXxXxXx

It takes a few minutes before I start to cry hysterically. It's not really a cry so much as it is a desperate sob. I should be wearing my seatbelt. I don't really care, but I curl up as my insides lurch horribly and force my knees against my stomach. Getting arrested for lack of seatbelt, I think, would be the equivalent of Hannibal Lecter being arrested for running a red light.

Everything stops; the car, the movement, the low, lulling drone spreading through the seats. It's lost, and I feel like I'm in the middle of a black hole. I'm halfway ashamed that I'm small enough to seem so tiny on her leather seats. They feel all-encompassing. I'm shrinking by the minute. Soon, I'll collapse in on my own epicenter; I won't even exist, anymore.

The door clicks open and I hear it slide. I don't notice when a hand slips over mine. The touch is almost timid, and once the stimulus hits my brain I fucking _snap_ to attention. My eyes flick upward so quickly and my jaw sets and I try to look anywhere but her eyes. I feel like there are black spiders crawling all over me; a disease of the flesh.

I feel something tickle at my shoulders. I realize, in the strangest lucidity, that my hair's gotten so long. It curls just under my neck, from what I feel. My bangs coil into my eyes. I feel like a different person.

I trusted him. Why would he do this?

I _trusted_ you.

Her arms and warm and soft. She pulls my glasses off gently and folds them neatly, enfolding herself around me until she draws my head into the juncture where her shoulder and neck connect. I feel a slight anxiety. She's not the only firecracker, anymore. Little sparks of light go off in my head, alarms, and warning signs. They're loud, obnoxious and ring in my ears obsessively. I dull them until the only noises are her breaths trying to slow down and synch with mine.

I think _the milk is going to go bad._

I think _your Christmas cookie ice-cream is melting._

I think _you're too close to me._

I try to accommodate and my problems fall into perspective one by one. I focus horribly. I need to throw things out of the spectrum for once. I need to avoid it at all costs.

I think _you can hold me if you want to._

I sound so distant, so far away, "He hates me."

"Why do you care?"

Her tone is more scolding than I can cope with, and I shrink a little at the thought that she's disappointed in me. She doesn't know why I feel like I do for him. She doesn't understand it, she shies away from it and it scares her. She doesn't comprehend how I can doggedly cling to a man who just raped me in a—

_Dark so dark and cold so cold and hard and rough and hissing in my ear words I don't fully understand but pleading whimpers and soft moans Harvey Harvey why did you go Harvey? Why? And pain such pain and so much pain ripping me in two and clawing clawing at me—_

"Harvey?"

Ground control to Major Tom.

I spiral back into orbit and figure out who I'm looking at, what's happening. Her fingers stroke my skin like someone strumming the strings of a guitar. I halfway flinch.

"I still apologize for—"

I'm startled by my sudden bravado.

My tiny finger (I'm an idiot, I'm an idiot, what am I doing? I'm not this bold...) rests at her lips, my arm awkwardly bent to accommodate. I gulp so hard that my stomach almost sloshes around and I mutter, "D-Don't tell me you're sorry. Tell me you're happy I'm not dead. Not that you're sorry for what happened, but that you're happy I'm alive. Just—Just please…tell me you'll protect me."

"To the best of my abilities, of course, you don't deserve—"

She confuses me. I've known her for about four days or so (might be more, might be less. I haven't thought clear in a long time.) and she's acting like a cross between my mother and my (some of the time) second boyfriend. Of course, both of those are before my mother descended into public drunkenness and my second boyfriend began the process of calling me a useless whore on a steady basis. Regardless, focus on the good.

Can you get this attached to someone in four days?

I just said four sentences in a row and I only stuttered once. My eyes, cloudy grey and chestnut, glance up in surprise at that thought.

Through a series of deeply unnerving events, I'm starting to…._improve._

I close my eyes, and I crawl a little forward. My nose bumps her shoulder but I rub my cheek there and as I allow the dark to set in, I drift. There's so much you notice when you're not looking that you don't when you are.

You can't _really _appreciate someone with your eyes open.

Sometimes, you just need to close your eyes.

An odd thought returns, but there's some kind of weight to it. It' obscure, random.

I think _She bought me white cheddar Cheez-its._


	18. Fighter

"That's ironic."

Is the first thing to hit my ears when I stir tiredly. I'm sleepy, not even somewhat awake when she prods at my shoulder. I can't help but think, _do you always look beautiful in the morning? _That is followed quickly by _My Reeses-Cup ice cream is melting. We're going to have problems if you don't prevent that._

I hear something whispering faintly against the car-seats. The top to the convertible is up, and I don't know how long I've been asleep for.

_Sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner…sometimes I feel like my only friend is the city I live in, the city of angels, lonely as I am…together we cry…_

My iPod (see: fate-device) seems to have found its way on. Anthony Kiedis tells me more about life than I'd like to know. The Red Hot Chili Peppers remind me that, in the end, it all comes down to nothing. And, in the great, big, vast universe, we've got no one but ourselves and the world we live in.

Thanks a lot, suicidal tendencies. Mucho gracias, Red Hot Chili Peppers.

"You have an interesting tattoo. Well, when traced back to your actual personality, I find it ironically intriguing, anyway."

I make a grunt of a sound and mumble out that the tattoo was the product of a drunken evening at age nineteen. Celebrating my birthday, we had a little bit too much stupor-ridden fun. In the midst of our inebriated hazes, we'd gone to the local ink-joint and gotten a bunch of matching tattoos. The five of us, we all have different ones.

Mine rests in a barely visible spot just at the left side of my neck, below my ear (impossible to see unless I move my hair or you seriously _look)_ like a small blotch. It is the Japanese kanji for 'fighter'. I explain that one of my pals has 'wisdom', another has 'strong', my second ex has 'soldier' and the last has 'go'. The tattoo that reads 'go' was a stupid fluke. Drunk flukes like that are the reason I hardly drink anymore.

None of it makes sense when I speak it out loud. It's just a tumble of words that end in my passive grunt of, "Yeah."

"Why a kanji?"

"_Drunk."_ I reiterate strongly, like expecting her to pay more attention.

I can smell the Christmas cookie ice cream melting.

"Groceries." I grumble. I sound like the troll underneath the bridge in those merry children's books.

_Under the bridge downtown is where I drew some blood…under the bridge downtown, I could not get enough…under the bridge downtown, forgot about my love…under the bridge downtown, I gave my life away…_

"If I detach, will you panic, or are you calm enough to allow it?"

Again, I just respond with a half-growl. "_Groceries."_

Beep.

My cell phone clicks and, when I fish it out of my pocket, the little envelope thing flies into the screen and the words 'Mistah J' pop in there. Without thinking, I press the center button and open the message, but the only contents of it seem to be 'NDKMDASM;dfma;f;LFMAHARVEYMDFSF;AA;' and I can't make heads or tails of why they exist at all in the first place.

I drop the phone between the cushions and (reluctantly, so reluctantly) slip away from the warmth of her body. My eyes close, the car door opens, shuts. Another opens, shuts and the gentle rev of the motor begins to push me back into peace. The warm seats vibrate beneath me and the car hums to life.

I still want to cry.

But, I am calm.

That's right.

_Calm._

Aces, Harvey, everything's _aces._

Aces remind me of jokers.

Jokers remind me of monsters.

"I'll drive slowly. I have a feeling you'll be motion sick, otherwise."

I just mumble.

"Groceries."


	19. Blew It X Secure

This chapter is going to be a very strange one, I will warn. I'm going from third-person in chronicling Cleveland's misery/odd feelings toward the Harvey break-up, back to Ivy and Harv's little chats. Bear with me—to be honest, I have to do this because _I'm_ starting to miss Cleave, myself. XD Thank you, **Harlequin Sequins**, for being my totally awesome cohort in the Batman-verse. We'll continue that collaboration eventually, once academic work stops killing us both. In honor of my dear friend Brie and all my other readers, here's some Cleave :D! And go check out her story **Scream Sanctuary **and anything else that happens to pop up on her profile. I triple-promise you won't be disappointed!

XxXxXxXxXx

He'd never thought things would turn out this way. Cleveland Roger Punsworth only figured he could play her into his hands. He didn't plan on hurting her. He hadn't wanted to; it hadn't been his intention at all.

When the radio crooned _I know who I want to take me home…_ and he tossed it across the kitchen in a rage (_I know who I want to take me home…_ Harvey's ringtone sang, and Harvey's eyebrow just went up as she spat subtly, "As if" and Cleave giggled), he found himself thinking only one thing. _Oh, Harv-cakes, I woulda given you the woooorrrrld._

The world and more. The world and everything. She very well could've been his clown-princess, and he her clown-prince. She could've easily slid into his good favor, been the last person on earth he didn't think hideously of. _You coulda been a contenduh, Harvey Tinkle. You could've had it all._

It'd over-excited his senses. The smell of her skin (it was always unrecognizable, he thought, she'd always smell like fear to him) and her sudden nerve. The flick of her knife, the cold steel wanting for his warm skin, the way her voice quavered there in the deep dark.

He'd stuffed his pillow with the Harlequin dress she'd dropped in the snow. It reeked of embarrassment and aloneness when he buried himself in it, face-first, nestling into the crook of her imagined body.

He was slowly coming down from a hefty alcohol buzz and coming up to the feel of a horrendous hangover. He'd drank because hallucinations brought her back. He, himself, would not. Pride was his withstanding quality. He'd not stoop to find some _woman._

Harvey was no woman. No unfeeling wretch could _possibly_ be a woman. It was impossible to associate femininity, sweetness, the act of cookie-baking or even ovaries with Harvey Tinkle. He'd had a hard time coping with how genuinely he wanted her, and it was even more difficult to come to grips with the fact that he _needed_ her. She was the worst kind of antidote to the worst kind of virus. She'd been the cure to his loneliness.

And in an instant where they'd clashed, he'd let it all rot away.

Cleveland Roger Punsworth. How easily he'd let her slip him into that name, like a second skin he didn't want to shed. He'd become it, and in that he'd found more of himself than he even thought was there.

He could hardly forgive himself for allowing it to bleed through. He'd let himself slip into second gear, his mind had blanked and his hands had spoken. Her body was his, and a piece of him knew, with that careless passion, he'd pushed her from him forever. Even he felt like a monster when his whiskey-laden breath hit the pillow and he shut his eyes, laughing in quiet, anguished sounds.

He'd wait an hour or so before digging out the Jack Daniels.

XxXxXxXxXx

(Harvey point of view, back at the obscure Isley residence)

"Was there a reason you'd gotten 'fighter' there?"

Her voice caresses my ears but my eyes don't open. I breathe, and wheeze when I realize how cold the air is. The sky hovers in a shade just darker than my eyes, the promise of snow a thick reminiscence enveloping Gotham. _Snow_, I think, bitterly, _is the last thing pure left in Gotham._

I dangle out the side-door of the car, too sore to walk, as she drags in the last plastic bag from the back-seat. I'm a spoiled, pregnant woman waiting for her to help me inside. I feel too shaky to just walk on my own. I feel like a baby bird that needs to learn to fly.

"How do you know that's what it m-means?" I fiddle with my glasses, straighten them out. I feel like I need to hack up a hairball.

"I always thought Japanese was an intriguing language, and katanas and the like are beautifully crafted objects that normally interest me. I've become familiar with a number of kanjis and, in my experience; a kanji is a highly representative character. It's not simply an idle swipe of lettering; it's very significant to a person." She makes me feel a good two feet tall, like a foolish idiot. I could never spout something that smart. I once had a problem figuring out the re-sealable packages for string cheese.

I touch at the tattoo, almost in thought. Did I get it for a reason? Did I ever figure myself feisty, loud? Did I ever fancy myself a firecracker, like her?

"You've got a spirit, it only needs cultivating. Everything needs nourishment before it can truly thrive. A dying flower needs to be coaxed back into health; slowly, and with infinite tenderness."

I think, _the Christmas cookie ice cream stained your floor-carpets._

I think, _I hate living in my own head._

I think, _I was dead long before I met you._

She reads my mind (see: links easily with my simplistic thoughts).

"You should speak your mind more often. It's making me a little impatient to try and guess your feelings by staring at your facial expressions all the time. I always know you almost say something, because your eyebrows furrow like you're about to divulge your inner dialogue."

Eyes open. Eyebrows shoot straight up. That was…_gifted._ Gifted is the only way I can explain that.

She should have been a psychiatrist. I fill my head with guilty thoughts of Poison Ivy in a low-cut, white coat and a pair of perched half-spectacles, her lips a deep ruby and her fingers gliding skillfully over a pad with a pencil tightly in hand. She crosses her legs primly, but not without a brief flash of purely pale thigh. I, of course, put a cork in my urge to salivate like a frat boy.

"Can I interest you in the decision to hobble or limp toward the front door?" I jump nervously and finally wrap my fingers around her warm hand. I don't deny that I hold on longer than I have to before I heave myself up from the seat. It's a few breathless seconds that fill me with the stinging cold and an altogether different warm. "Harvey?"

I stumble to my feet and hold on tight. I'm swaying as I go. My thighs feel numb. My vision jerks from side to side for a second, but refocuses when I take a solid step forward. I just murmur, "H-Hm?"

"On a completely seriously level, do you—is it possible, you think, that you'll be alright?"

If I pretend it never happened, then I'll be completely fine.

Denial is more than a river in Egypt, after all. It's also an intoxicating idea and a secure state of mind.

"Maybe."


	20. Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown

Three weeks. Three weeks will make it a month, a week and a day (I think) since I've left my worse half.

We weave in and out of rooms. We wind eloquently around each other and avoid each other's company and some nights we share beds and talk in soft voices like we'll be caught. We don't understand each other, but we're taking progressive steps to mold into things that are comprehensive.

I throw up more than I thought possible. Every few hours I need a barf-bag. Morning sickness is, apparently, the worst experience known to man. Luckily enough it's erratic, and I don't puke every single day on the damn calendar. She's gentle enough that if I cry she's willing to listen.

My emotions are all-fucking-over the place.

It's been years since I've wailed into a pillow. I try to keep it as quiet as I can. I'm embarrassed to wake her up so I can whine and moan all over her in a mucous-induced parade of pathetic sounds and sniffles. I've been pretty much stripped of my dignity (see: raped by a backwards-ass clown), but I try to collect as many scraps of self-preservation as I can.

She has not asked me to go shopping with her. Instead, I am baby-sat by numerous green vines which I'm convinced are attached to the alarm system. I know nothing of these plants, or why they are here. When I asked her, once, if they were controlled by animatronics, she laughed at me and called me a flake.

I suppose I am one.

I'm making an effort to learn how to calm down, but it's slow and anguished like ninety percent of my life. Her rooms are furnished with bright colors and warm humidity that keeps away the frigid chill outside. A choir of stray cats mews gracelessly outside. The sounds of Goldberg's Variations float through her corridors. I feel like one of those damn animals that sits at her doorstep.

I have a collection of text messages I don't have the heart to delete. They're all from Cleave. The gibberish-pattern makes little to no sense most of the time, but it doesn't dumb down the fear I've developed for him. Ivy insists that I'm perfectly safe. Her babies are always there to protect me, she says. And when she's home, she'll do the protecting. All in all, I'm pretty secure. Ivy says that the plants have all attuned themselves to me. When I ask how she knows this fact, I receive another statement regarding my ability to pay attention.

I've come to the final conclusion that, even with a college degree, it's not worth it trying to utter an intellectual statement.

Our moments are shy and skittish. She touches at the tattoo on my neck, brief, meaningful, and asks me if there's anything I want. She doesn't move her fingers, but I feel them in little, electrified pulses sitting on my skin. When I turn a few shades of hot pink and sputter out "Reeses Puffs" at an unheard of speed, she traces an impossibly manicured nail down to my collarbone. Her eyes follow, like she's intrigued by me. She looks at me like I'm her favorite experiment.

I look at her in a number of inappropriate ways.

I'm slowly sliding back into a comfortable rut. She scares me and ignites me all at once. She's always touching me, though, when she talks, when she moves. Whenever she's paying attention to me she always _has_ to touch me like the urge to bridge some gap.

"Your baby-daddy seems to have lost some of his zest."

When she returns home (after I bound out of the chair in the living room to greet her with the usual—my need for attention, hindered by my stagnant fear of it), she drops the paper on the kitchen counter.

Before she leaves to go grocery shopping (always at four in the morning or earlier), she wakes me to warn me she'll be out. If she doesn't, she fears I'll awaken to a panic attack and the thought that I've been abandoned. She doesn't think I notice when she kisses me on the forehead and one of her eighteen thousand confusing vines hugs me in a brief squeeze around the waist.

"W-What do ya mean?"

"There's been a drastic lacking in the ostentatious front-page headlines involving dear Joker and any action along the lines of kills, maims and slaughters. A thorough lack of explosions as well. It's almost as though he's been punted directly off the face of the earth."

I pale almost instantly.

It's a good twenty minutes when I finish heaving up my intestines and just collapse in a shivering heap on the bathroom tiling.

I think, _he killed himself._

I think, _it's all your fucking fault, Harvey._

The sob I let out is bubbly, slippery and thick as blood. It sticks in my throat and all I can do is crawl into a sad, small ball and clutch both sides of my head, coughing and crying into the floor.

Hormones: Full swing.

Logic: Out the window.

Ability to cry yourself into dehydration: Priceless.

For everything else, there's unnecessary overreaction to an avoidable situation.

"Harvey," and she falls around me, so sudden and delicate, so genuine and honest. She's raw, unrelenting care without a hitch. If I'd have ever had a real mother I would want her to be exactly like this woman. "Harvey—Harvey, shh…"

I shouldn't be thinking this. He raped me. He took everything from me, not once, but twice. I'm having his child that I wouldn't want in a thousand years. He plucked me from my life and gave me a new one; all tainted and sullied and filthy with clown makeup, bloodied lipstick and cheap, two-toned outfits.

He deliberately stole my humanity.

"He wouldn't kill himself over you, Harvey-flower. Oh no, no he wouldn't. That would be an unselfish action for a highly selfish man. He fancies himself far too much a God, far too little a mortal to even consider the concept of spilling his own blood for you."

Oh, sweet-cakes, you make everything sound like it's all coming up roses.

Thank you. Dr. Isley, for the record, for reminding me that I'm an insignificant smudge on Cleveland's life and will, therefore, not impact a single decision he chooses to make.

"How much of your own would you spill on his behalf?" I tense and tighten at the accusation. It feels almost like she's scolding me for loving him. I feel like I've committed a horrendous sin. "Calm down and _hush._"

Guilt ushers its way into her voice.

I choke on the force of my own tears.

I can't believe I'm having a nineteenth nervous breakdown.

I'm more ashamed of myself than I can possibly explain. I'm completely unable to put into words how horribly degenerate, how completely degraded I feel to be acting like this. In front of someone _else_, no less.

Her arms snake around my shoulders and my ear falls just over her heart. I cry harder and harder until I can't breathe and my only capability is to listen to the steady _thump thump thump_ of the drum within her chest. Every exhalation is puffy and hard; the sound is like a steamboat whistle spewing out sound. My whole skeleton trembles with the force, and my hands fist desperately in her hair when I reach it until I just pull lightly and shriek soundlessly into the folds of her black jacket _why why why?_

You're a failure, little Harley Quinn.

You've pushed aside your Joker-king.


	21. Beautiful Stuff

"_Hey, Harv-uh-ee."_

"_Yeah, Cleave?"_

_His fingers, long, spidery, run through my hair. He rests his lips at a strand of auburn hair and nuzzles protectively like a purring cat. I feel overwhelmed when he rests a hand over my heart. There's nothing clear, here, it's a foggy haze._

_I can't see clearly._

"_Don't leave me, hah, toots?"_

_I sound far-off and my eyes slide closed. I nod, and exhale._

"_Yeah."_

XxXxXxXxXx

Safe is the only way to describe this. Secure, safe, warm. The Amazonian Goddess in a green sweater, an outfit the shade of holly-leaves, lies curled against the bathroom wall with me in her arms. I can't help but look up for a moment and catch a glimpse of her jaw. It's undefined though light, feminine in the finest respect. Her eyelashes are the same shiny red as her hair, and her eyebrows are little streaks of copper fire.

And I'm counting down the seconds until my infatuations with two separate people die down a little.

A blonde and a red-head. I guess I'm turned on by recessive traits.

Green-eyed and emerald-eyed, two distinctly different shades.

My cell phone is the first place my thoughts fly. The cell phone with _his_ number. The cell phone that is my very last connection to him. If this battery gives out, if this breaks, my connection severs completely.

"You're warm," there's the slightest sense of a moan in her words, and she adjusts herself to wrap around me a little tighter. I push down the nauseous moment in my gut with extreme difficulty. There's a brief claustrophobia, but I demand it dies down. I have learned that you have to be afraid of things, but do them anyway. "Were you designed to be so unearthly comfortable, or is it a nifty talent of yours?"

I think, _you really __**are**__ a dork. __**No one**__ says 'nifty'._

I love it when beautiful women are bigger geeks than you are. I feel so ugly next to her, but my nerd-factor is less. She can name the periodic table of elements from the recesses of her mind—I realize that I'm no better. I can quote whole chunks of Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet._

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon and find me an excuse to figure out why where I feel most at home is with my cheek pressed to her breast and my hand entwined gently in her soft, wild hair.

"I-I'm no warmer than anybody else, last I checked, bu-but I guess it's good that you like the heat."

"He's not dead."

She mutters it, and it's muffled. She ducks her head into my hair and inhales, like the statement is a bitter, uneasy one for her to make. I push the dream I just had into the back of my mind (somehow, I knew, somehow….) and only nod.

I would be a completely unfair son of a bitch to go running back to him. I won't do it, besides, my paranoia for his health loses to my blatant fear of even being in his presence.

"I should have known so much better than to frighten you so distinctly. It was a foolishly vindictive move on my behalf. I allowed my intolerance for him to get the best of me, and in it I unjustly hurt you. For that, I apologize."

Her lips are ruby red when the drop unceremoniously to the tattoo on my neck. The tattoo that no one has ever before noticed; the tattoo that Cleave, _Cleave_ who saw me completely naked didn't even see. It would be a blatant lie to say there isn't a brief swell of arrogant pride inside me when she touches at it. I feel too proud of myself to have someone care enough about me to even see my idiosyncrasies.

"The irony to that character is the fact that it can mean either warrior _or_ pawn. It's an ideal representation, I should think. Combatant, champion, fighter, soldier, warrior, or, perhaps most fitting, 'one who fights'. What do you fight for, Miss Quinn?"

She peppers a delicious little line of tender affections down to my collarbone, still lazily thrown around me like a boa constrictor. My head swims for a few seconds, first in panic and next in pleasure, then I tilt my head to get a look as close to her eyes as I can.

"Survival w-would be corny and untrue, and love would be cliché and even more a li-lie. You could say I fight because it's all I have to do." All I have to do out of _what?_ Boredom? Tedium? Existence? "Quinn isn't m-my last name."

And it's a name I never want to use again.

"You wouldn't adopt it, even for the charm?" She ceases the action and lets her forehead burrow into the back of my head. Too overwhelmed by relief mixed with fatigue, I shake my head and will myself not to argue.

"I shouldn't have anything that close to charming. I'm not the charming type."

"I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

She wasn't kidding about the Japanese fixation. Her bathroom smells like Cherry Blossoms even after I yakked for a good five minutes and I squint to see the little Bonsai tree that lies pathetically beside the finely-furnished sink. The towels are ornamented in the fashions of traditional scrolls, but I note the weird, Japanese character (See: Kanji. See also: My stupidity) is repeated over and over in the fluffy, tan terrycloth.

"What's it mean?"

She unravels a little from me, taken like a silky, green ribbon on the wind, and her interest floats over to where my eyes are fixed. Her lips purse, like she's thinking, and when they relax I find myself wondering dizzily if her lipstick is ruby red or her cherry lips are. I need to see if she left imprints.

"It can actually mean either flower or wild rose. Which is _also_ intriguing—" this is another lesson, I feel it, "—because flowers are associated with domestication and homely comfort, whereas wild roses are linked commonly with the feeling of freedom or indiscipline. Wild roses are usually thought of in more vibrant color. _Anything _wild is automatically more exotic to the human mind. It's just like every person—everyone's a rose, but, by the same token, their thorns can make them deadly."

Her analogy flies on elaborately shaded wings right over my little head.

Thorns are deadly. So far, we're on the same page.

"Have you never philosophically considered it in such a way, Harvey-flower?"

Harvey-flower is the fondest statement that makes my tummy do a hilarious pancake-flip. I close my eyes again and remember just what it's like to feel like you don't have to impress someone. Like you can make them feel fucking diddly just by being there.

_You are calm and reposed, let your beauty unfold, pale white like the skin stretched over your bones, spring keeps you ever close… you are second-hand smoke, you are so fragile and thin, standing trial for your sins…_

I look around for my iPod, but the thing is nowhere in sight. When I search around, I catch a look at something on the white tiles.

It's an iPod Nano, it seems, the color a bright, scarlet red and the screen glows a soft white. The headphones are uncoiled and spread clumsily across the floor. The sound against them makes them jump around like silly little animals, the vibrations sending them hopping in weak little springs to drop back down.

_Holding onto yourself the best you can… you are the smell before rain, you are the blood in my veins…_

"You are the smell before rain," I echo, humming to myself, enraptured, "You are the blood in my veins…that's some be-beautiful stuff."

"You've got a heart," She murmurs, and strangely enough this déjà vu sends off white-hot flashes behind my eyes. She kisses at my jaw line before replacing her body with the wall, and leaving me cold and dumbfounded and shakily confused. _How did she know he told me I didn't have a heart? _"It simply takes a bit of patience and the proper coaxing to thaw it out of hiding."

Her iPod seals my deal.

I never fight the power of music.


	22. WaffleBaconSandwich X Domestic Living

Fast forward: Pregnant, five months. Do I hate my life? Why yes, my children, I certainly do!

Having a tummy is a horrible experience. No, seriously, I really can't stand it. Everything is inconvenient, including the constant need to piss, the sporadic and occasional vomiting and the stomach-aches that don't end. I hobble awkwardly, but all things considered I am not the size of a house. I'm still pretty small, honestly, so I guess I should be grateful.

We're guilty of so many things. Minor kisses, small ones, weak ones, ones against walls, ones on beds, soft ones, meaningful ones.

The most relief I have ever experienced _has_ to be the newspaper. It reads, in thankfully bold writing, _Joker Targets Wayne Enterprises. Twelve People Killed._

Those twelve people just paid a hell of a lot for my peace of mind.

But it's fine, because Cleveland's not dead and I can escape the guilt-monster.

"Ivy?" I mumble, and she stops playing with my hair long enough to lean over where a leg is wrapped around mine and make a low, inquisitive sound, "For motherfu-fuck's sake, can you turn off the goddamn Mozart? Does it _need_ to play when we sleep?"

My hormones make me angry.

Yeah. My hormones. Those are it.

"The flowers, Ha—"

"Yeah, I get it. Plants are your gimmick, it's your thing, every super-villain needs a g-gimmick but for _fuck's sake, Ivy."_

"Are you unnaturally badly tempered just for today, or is it a continuous statement? The music needs to be—"

"The music's on, I'm going back in my own room. It's one or the other, _hon."_

"Must you be so bull-headed? Isn't that a masculine quality? How impossible is it to just _stop acting like a beast? _Really, now, can you not merely calm down? I really can't comprehend why you always ask me to change my normalcy simply because it's not the same as _yours."_

"Because, where I come from we don't set up orchestras for the flora outside our door."

"Where you come from," She begins nonchalantly, and curls the tips of her nails against the kanji on my neck, tracing the lines idly, "your cousins mate with their cousins and the offspring ends up with a multitude of peculiarities, among those being an _abnormal fetish for clowns."_

We don't talk that night.

Sometimes, we prefer not to talk at all.

She holds a firm position of resentment for Cleveland and I do all I can to dodge those fights. She opens her mouth when she knows she shouldn't and, later, when I'm curled up reading a book in her chair (Miss Genius refuses to own a television with cable. All I can watch is Two and a Half Men and The Simpsons. Charlie Sheen's antics shame me, and I don't know how anyone can keep under the illusion that he's _attractive_) she'll sneak up behind me, put her lips just next to my ear and whisper that she didn't mean to hurt my feelings. But it'll never be an 'I'm sorry' or an 'I was wrong'. It's always 'I'm sorry I hurt your feelings'.

I get it, world. I'm a fuck up pregnant with a psychotic's child. Is it necessary that every factor possible remind me of this?

"Yeah," I'll mutter, because I'm vindictive and cold where she's vindictive and warm. I won't ever say 'it's okay' because it's not and she knows it, but taking shots at her plants is the same as taking shots at her children.

My sensitivity level has declined to negative nine-thousand.

Actually, it might be over nine-thousand.

I think it _is_ over nine-thousand.

She slinks calmly over to the couch and plops down, curling up in the most elegant way. Her legs tuck behind her and her feet seek the cuddle of the cushions. She's cute, in an odd way, in lazy, red and green striped pajama pants (my Christmas presents are _so_ witty) and an emerald colored top that leaves her midriff bare.

"Have you thought of a name?"

I look up from _A Writer's Diary_ (she and I share similar though clashing opinions about Virginia Woolf. I believe she was brilliant all the way through, and Ivy insists she had 'moments of subtle ingenuity') and make a little 'hmm' sound in the back of my throat. I lean against the pillow behind me and nod, but keep on reading.

I love playing the silent treatment.

"Well, provided it's a boy or a girl, what names have you managed to decide on?"

I waver, and just speak. "Boy, Richard, girl, Rosalia…or Rose, for short."

Her face lingers into a soft smile and her fingers curl inward just so in that way I find so endearing in such a sweet way. "No Harvey?"

"Not for _any_ reason, _never."_

The cat I demanded she let in mewls idly as she approaches Ivy. The kitten's name is Fuzzball (as requested by me, of course) and she's a little, stuffy Persian. She struts around like she's the only one in the home and her eyes are blue like when you throw water over ice. Her fur is the same color as the snow. It took a good, long time to convince her to let the stray in, but in the end I always somehow get my way.

Fuzzball jumps on the couch and casually burrows behind Ivy. She doesn't seem thrilled, but she awards the little thing what she's looking for. Cuddly closeness.

This is one of those felines that never really care. I pick her up, sometimes, and use her like a cuddle-monster or some kind of furry pillow. She's well-behaved and tiny, composed more of fur than of actual flesh.

She tried to eat one of Ivy's daisies, once. That did _not_ go over well once she had a complete heart attack and _I_ had to scream at her to keep her from throwing Fuzzball back outside into the street. I refused. I have become attached to Fuzzers, even though she prefers Ivy over me to umpteenth degree. Why that is, I'm not sure even I know.

"I dare say I've rubbed off on you. Rose?"

"It's pretty. I love roses."

"You like white roses, don't you?"

I tilt my head curiously and, a little perturbed, I nod and give her the '_what the fuck are you magical?_' look.

"You're not the red rose type. You're easily readable."

Fuzz purrs like the sound of rolling marbles across the floor. The sun peeks in through the heavy, velvet curtains. My alarm in my room goes off. I've developed an obscure kind of insomnia; my sleep patterns are all out of whack.

_L is for the way you look at me…O is for the only one I see…V is very, very extraordinary…E is even more than anyone that you adore and love is all that I can give to you…love is more than just a game for two…two, in love can make it take my heart but please don't break it, yeah…love was made for me and you…_

"Do you _seriously _have that on your music player?"

I avoid her eyes. She's grinning, and Fuzz peeks over her thigh deviously. She and the cat are in cahoots.

"Make me a waffle-bacon-sandwich with syrup in the middle and shut the fuck up."


	23. Confrontation

Fret not, my friends! There will be Cleave soon—well, more Cleave, for now, Cleave's darting in and out of this. Trust me, this is all part of a plot device and if I explain it, this'll basically ruin everything. I'm just kind of still inwardly debating whether I want Harvey with Cleave or Ivy—or I can be a complete bitch and go for both. I'm actually contemplating both. There's a poll on my profile, so please, feel free to vote :D! And now, onward!

XxXxXxXxXx

Cleveland Roger Punsworth found himself completely irate by the thought that he was losing the game. 'The game' was, he had learned, the only way to live life. To take it into your own purple-gloved hands and destroy it, if you wished.

He was also not about to lose to a _red-head._ He was a blonde and, by definition, much better than the other. A small-time villain, he scoffed to himself, turning the corner in the chilly spring night. A no-talent, miniature crook. Poison Ivy—hah!

The oddity was his lack of obnoxious costuming or face makeup. It was just an overcoat, created of heavy wool (did Gotham ever cease the freeze?), black, accented by the purple vest beneath and the emerald tie to hold together the correct abnormality. Was it possible for his pants to _not_ be terrifically tight? Dark blue jeans clung to his stick-legs and a pair of excessively ratty, dark blue Converses sat on his oafishly oversized feet.

_A silly little girrrrrl_, he thought, and flicked cleverly at the knife nestled in his pocket. His friend, his only companion.

The sound, when he'd approached the steps of six-hundred-and-sixty-six Bay Terrace, was a loud mewl that he associated slowly with the lightly squeaking cat on the stoop. The thing was, he swore, a massive marshmallow and a pile of sheer snow. There was no way in any kind of hell that _ball_ was a cat.

A cat with a green collar.

His interest piqued, though, and when he swept his messily tied golden hair out of his eyes, he knelt over to pick up the feline. It didn't so much as bat at his hands, and a slow, casual smirk spread across his lips. This feline was not just any feline, oh no, this feline must have belonged to—

"_Less hugging, more French toast! Snap to it, whore, I'm hu-hungry here!"_

He'd listened for that brief moment, and in seconds the obviously hostile voice registered in his quick mind. Harvey, there could be no other woman so quick to complain about a simple act of affection. Harvey, who he was sure loved him back, and he was sure _he_ loved, himself, but who refused to show any sign of human tendency whatsoever. Hell, the girl was even more an ice-bitch than _he_ was.

The doorbell's sound was dull, and he continued to cradle the fuzzy (did the collar say _Fuzzball?_) little kitten to his chest, laughing under his breath in a slightly jovial moment. Oh, yes, he was partial to animals—he could never have a dog because _Harvey_ was allergic like a beast.

"You should not be capable o—" A pause, and the red-head at the door almost instantly dug her emerald eyes into his forest ones. Her amusement seemed to spiral downward, whereas his just grew and grew. "_You_ certainly should _not_ be capable of finding this address, you above _all_ people."

"Ya know, Ivy, dearie, baby—" He'd paused, and leaned forward. His eyebrows rose right up into the sky itself, and his lips cracked into a grin that pushed back his permanent dimples, "Ya know what I don't like? Ah—I don't like, oh no, I don't, when people take things that aren't _theeeeeeeir's_."

"You cannot _have_ something that doesn't even desire you, clown."

His patience with this woman was short, but he wasn't about to lose it. No, if he killed _her_, it'd make his life all the more difficult with Harvey, wouldn't it? He wasn't objecting to the thought of keeping her in a cage of his making, of locking her up so she would be his forever, but a vaguely sick way he wanted her to be happy in that cage. In his own oh-so-masculine way, Cleveland wanted her to _want_ his cage. Well, in essence, he wanted her to leave the cage and be content with his leash.

"Now, listen. Either you git her little bum out here, or this _object_ I'm so cas-you-a-lly cuddling loses a pulse." Would he kill the cat, though? There were a number of things he'd kill for the goal of romancing the Harley, but the incessantly meowing feline was his only hostage.

"Feel free to end the creature. It's not I you'll be losing points with. The cat is Harvey's object of affection; most certainly not mine." His other eyebrow followed suit to the left. Had _he_ just been undermined by Pamela Isley? Not two or so years ago she was just some little glorified botanist with a degree, and now she had the nerve to talk back to _him!_ "She doesn't want to see you. You raped her in the managerial closet of a _Wal-Mart_. In what fashion do you possibly believe she'll even be willing to acknowledge you?"

"Guys make mistakes, _toots-uh."_ His voice had gained a dangerously low hiss, and the cat in his hands yowled responsively when his grip intensified.

Bringing up that subject was just the same as taking bat to his nerves and then hacking up the little bits with a chainsaw. Of _course_ he felt guilty about the subject, but he was kicking himself in the rear to find every excuse for the action. She'd already been pregnant, and it _was_ his, so—

No, that didn't make anything better at all.

Was that how it worked? You made one mistake, and were condemned for it for the rest of your natural life?

Okay, so it wasn't _one_ mistake. One mistake was kind of making it menial. He'd terrified (and considerably so) a woman who was _already _anxious of physical touch. He'd pretty much chased her right away from him (and right away from men in general, he figured sarcastically) with her tail between her legs.

Most men, he understood, were fairly turned on by the subject of women dating women. The thing was, though, that he didn't quite _care_ how admittedly beautiful (and curvy, oh so curvy) Poison Ivy was, _he _wanted his girl.

"You're gonna have to come to te_rrrrr_ms with something here, man-hatin'-bitch. That right in there, that's _my_ Harv-cakes, and that little guy of her's, that little guy is _my_ pro-per-tee, too. Gal or guy, that hellion belongs to _me."_

The cat's sounds had dulled into a few low whines. Apparently, Fuzzball wasn't too satisfied with her new friend.

"If you had any fashion of intellect, you'd realize that the mere sight of you could push her into a suicidal terror or induce something akin to trauma. For example, the mere sight of you is forcing _me_ into something of an induced rage."

The knife was out in pure seconds, and the cold steel leaned forward to halfway meet Ivy's flesh. He wasn't about to lose, he knew that much. His, his, _his_, that was what she was. She may have been irrational, illogical, unloving, angry and stupid, but he wanted her for himself. He was willing to gracefully accept the fact that she was more than capable of becoming the ice-bitch-from-hell, and he was willing to try to match that and try to relate, himself.

No one ever said love made sense. Attraction is often a concept people spend hours attempting to pick apart, but it will never be something understandable.

He knew only that he needed his Harley like he knew she needed him. It was a look in her eyes, a scent on her skin, a tremor in her tone that gave that all away.

Because he was, of course, simply irresistible.

It was a casual tap of a red nail that slithered a green vine from the frame of the door, and the red-head just purred, "You put away the blade, I agree to keep my babies from twisting your head from your neck."

His lip pulled into a snarl, his shoulders dropped from their defensive stance, but his eyes were alight and on-guard. Fuzzball had swiped at him hopelessly, then the fluff-and-stuff little thing leapt from his arms and zipped inside. The vine had wrapped around her arm, and Ivy was ever so gently running the nail of her thumb down and up the animated plant.

"_The toast is burning and I can't reach the counter! H-Help me, here, and get the fucking Jehovah's witnesses off the goddamn property!"_

"You mark my _woooorrrrds-uh_, sweetie-kins," she could feel his breath on her face, and the tingling undertones of tequila made their ways through her nose, "She ain't _yours."_

With the spring, he came and went.

She had to admit, his false devotion impressed her.

Exasperated, she knew this was definitely not the end. A nagging possibility told her that it was very probable he felt about the tiny Harvey just as intensely as she did.

Of course, she was reluctant to admit to that.

Why did life complicate like this so often?

The wind murmured a promise that this had only just begun.

"_Oh __**fuck! **__–My __**BAGEL**__!"_


	24. Little Guy

When I get over-excited about things, I tend to get impatient. When I get impatient I just…_do_ things…so, welcome the newest addition to the Punsworth family! Indeed, Harvey's got a little tyke of her own, now! I thank everyone so much for reading, but we're rapidly approaching my soon-to-be ending in a good two or three chapters, I think. I hope everyone's enjoying this as much as I'm getting a kick out of writing it. I love all of you!

XxXxXxXxXxXx

It's a boy.

Every godforsaken moment they kept telling me it, Cleave and Ivy were both right.

It's the first time in my life I want to fall asleep and _wake up_. There's a mixture of depression and relief and sadness and detachment swimming in my veins. I hear, _complications_ and _problems_ and _Harvey, Harvey, Harvey _over and over.

Ladies and gentlemen, Poison Ivy. She can deliver children, make great soufflés and devise perfumes for Victoria's Secret (that _is_ Victoria's secret, now). I'm dizzy and drugged and just so tired.

I wonder where all the time has gone. I can't put my finger on it at all. It seems like only yesterday I was pestering Ivy to tell me that Cleave apparently showed up to antagonize me. Or to antagonize her in order _to_ antagonize _me._

He has ten little fingers and ten little toes and his eyes are a warm, dark shade of green. The beginnings of fuzz on his head shimmer shiny gold in the light, and he's the softest kind of pale. He's the softest kind of anything. That doesn't matter, because I have enough sickened, dizzy epidural running through me to be totally unaware of everything. His eyes are big and naïve and wide and his cheeks are puffy and sweet, like a miniature stuffed toy.

I mumble something out, and I see the blurry flood of red above me move and shift.

Someone tell the newborn to quit crying. His mother's exhausted. I should make Ivy tape this experience and when he's old enough to panic me by smoking pot or getting some girl pregnant, I'll replay it for him and scream _SEE WHAT YOU DID TO MOMMY?_

This definitely isn't the time to sit around making jokes at myself.

This'll make him premature, won't it? I've been pregnant for about eight months…is there anything wrong? I can't focus. My head pounds to incomprehensible amounts and everything I've ever known swims violently. My iPod plays quietly in the background, linked to a pair of makeshift speakers we managed to rig to her house-wide audio system ("If you get your way, I get _mine_, too")

_If you're not the one then why does my soul feel glad today? If you're not the one then why does my hand fit yours this way?_

This is totally unnecessary. Half of me moans and the sound of a quiet coo within the cries resounds, and I can only sit there and listen and feel deathly ill with myself for even _putting this song on there._

_I don't know why you're so far away but I know that this much is true. We'll make it through. And I hope you are the one I share my life with. And I wish that you could be the one I die with. And I pray in you're the one I build my home with. I hope I love you all my life…_

Stop hugging me. I can only lie there and cry hysterically in utter embarrassment when her arms slide around my waist and it all pours out. I have a son, I'm in love with a woman _and_ a man, and I need a few minutes to breathe. When I sob, it more or less feels like I've heaved out my insides.

I can hardly motherfucking breathe.

I can't tell if I'm crying because I miss Cleave or I'm crying because I love Ivy or I'm crying because I've just had a child and oh god damn it I'm a _mom._

I can't tell if this is a breakdown or a relief. It feels like a burden lifted, but a part of it is almost similar to my anxiety disorder that won't seem to go away.

I have a son.

I have _the Joker's child._

The most frightening thought occurs to me, then, in between the tears and the sobs and the helpless sounds. It occurs to me near the proclamations of "shit, fuck, shit—sh-sh-shit, fuck.." and coughs. He's not going to leave me alone. He's going to come back.

I panic in the midst of my not-so-religious revelation.

He's going to want this little guy.

Over my dead motherfucking body.

"Ivy," I murmur, and she tucks her chin against my shoulder. I wonder where the baby is, considering I've lost all track of time and understanding or space and actual existence (see: life itself). My vision warps, and she murmurs a soft, "Hn?" against my neck.

I'm happy.

And it's making me disgusted.

The happiness shifts. It's a worry, now, a worry I can't shake off. I'm panicky for a few moments, next I feel like my stomach is shrinking in on itself rapidly.

"The B-Batman."

"He's not here, Harvey, he's not going to come for you, I pro—"

"I need to talk to him."

"You want to give up your only son to a man in bat-spandex?"

Stop making this harder than it already is. It's either the man in bat-spandex or the man in purple pants who plans to decimate whole metropolitan areas. My best bet is right where I'm planning to put my money…or my genetics.

Bat-for-brains.

"Why don't you think this through, just for a little while? This proclamation is mad, Harvey, it's not as if anything is going to happen. And if he returns gunning for his child, I certainly won't let him have the boy."

I'm going to be unselfish.

It's a new way of living. Like going on a diet, or giving up your suicidal tendencies.

"F-Find the Batman."


	25. Richard John

The bedroom is completely dark, not an ounce of luminescence in sight. When the door opens and I hear it, a miniature strip of hallway sprouts into my field of vision. It illuminates the carpet in a tiny, long shred and I stare at it in a dizzy fixation. I'm running a fever. I feel choked up. My back is still to the door.

A voice, impenetrable, harsh, speaks, "What's this I hear about you and a son?"

I flinch.

I know that voice.

Portuguese Bat-o-man.

"Need—a-a favor…" my tone dies out. I just wrap myself up in the covers and avoid the bulldozer-beast hidden in a blotchy shadow in the dark.

"Why should I do _you_ any favors, Harley?"

The name is enough to make me want to fly out of bed and slap him across his rodent-of-the-night face.

"It'd be the right thing to do." I close my eyes and ignore his physique, broad and daunting before me. If I remember Mythology 101 well enough, I'd call him Zeus—no, maybe more Haphesteus. God of the Forge seems a lot more familiar for bat-for-brains than King of Gods.

"What? Like _you_ did the right thing, Harley? Like _you_ protecting _him_ was the right thing?"

I get it, I made a mistake. Fuck. Can everyone just hop off my shit, here?

"Richard John," I rasp, and I remember a psychology technique burned across the ages. It'll be familiar to anyone who's seen _Silence of the Lambs._ "Richard John is his name. He weighs five pounds, his eyes are green and his hair is blonde. He doesn't cr-cry much, and he's pale and really little. When he does cry, it's pretty loud."

"Poison Ivy told me that you wanted me to _take_ the boy. You would just trust me with something like this, with your own son?"

"Either I trust you or I trust Cleave with my son. I won't let him have the boy. He doesn't deserve. I want to fuck his life up so bad; I want to take this away from him."

Even in the dark, I can hear the Batman's startled hitch in breath for a fraction of a millisecond, like I've thrown a wrench into his composure-gears. I open my eyes, and my face is hot with what's either a red flush or pure, burning hatred materialized.

"I wa-want this to be his proverbial kick in the balls."

I love you so much that I hate you. Do you know that, Cleave? I hate the way I wish I hated you. I hate the way I want you to die, and even more than that I hate the way I know that, if you _did_ die, I would mourn you worse than that psychotic Haversham lady from that movie I saw a really long time ago. I hate the way the mere thought of you is still enough to make me miss the quirky way you tried to make me laugh, how hard you pushed to amuse me, and how much harder you pushed when you realized it couldn't be done. I hate the way you exist on the same planet as I do, and the way you breathe the same air in the same atmosphere as I do. I hate the way my infant son makes me thing of the warm-fuzzies I miss with you; even if they were possessive, warm fuzzies.

Fuck the warm fuzzies.

"If you're any ounce a good guy, not a hero, but a _good guy_, you'll do this for me." I sound so resolute, so set in stone, and I lock eyes with his chilly ones. I imagine that they mirror mine by now; a grey hardened to a stone-marble shade, the chestnut in them left behind for a tenderer, doe-eyed creature.

He stops, and I can see the cogs turning in his brain. I hear his weird boot things shift on the carpet, and his gravel-and-sandpaper voice creaks out, "I will."

The baby cries.

I wonder how Ivy got him here so quick.

How long has it been?

I close my eyes again and just murmur, "Thank you."

Bye, baby boy.

Bye, Richard. So long, Richie. Never again mine, Dick.

My heart hurts more than ever before.

I just gave up my only child to spite the ever-loving fuck out of my ex-boyfriend.

Have I really become this person?

_Goodnight, moon, I want the sun, if it's not here soon I might be done…_


	26. Purgatory

Welcome to what I think will be the very last chapter of this entire series—unless, of course, I crank out some pathetic one-shots like I'm known to. I've got one in the works, actually, and interestingly enough I have a collaboration idea with two friends on a BatmanXWrestling cross-over, but that's still in the planning stages. Trust me, it'll be amusing. Anyway, I want to thank everybody for sticking with me for…oh, wow, way too long, specifically through three installments in this series. I had _no_ clue it was going to wind up being this long, but I think I'm glad. It means a lot to me that you guys like it, and I'm grateful for all the feedback. Without further ado, on with the show!

XxXxXxXxXx

Like a thief in the night, he's gone, and I feel even emptier than I have in years. Having money stolen from me by my parents, being kicked out by my parents, watching a ten year old die, becoming a criminal, having bottomless sex with the Joker, being kicked out _by_ the Joker and being _raped_ by the Joker all do not add up to this single feeling.

I know I'm being whiny, now, folks, I know I've used the terms _hollow, empty, weak _and _vulnerable_ a good eighty times, but now I really do mean it.

I've lost a good half of myself.

"You look horrendous."

Ivy's voice is so vague and distant. I realize that I've gone from vengeful to utterly helpless in no less than five minutes. The miniature bundle of warmth is gone, and the separation anxiety is like coming down from a tremendous buzz. The sheer, slight seconds of fulfillment have fled and I'm alone in my tunnel-vision darkness. My every muscle feels hot, heavy and I turn the pillow over to lie against the cooler side. It doesn't help. I'll start crying in a few minutes or so.

"I know for a solidified fact that the Bat is far too much a believer in morality to lay a hand on that child. He'll get older and be a…._dignified_ member of the festering mass of meat-bags known as society." She stops talking when she realizes I don't want to hear it. I go quiet, dead.

The silence is all-encompassing. It's not the good kind; not like a hug, or a cuddle or even a gentle embrace. It feels like an enfolding hopelessness.

Holy fuck, I'm so emo.

When she finally has the bravado to hug her arms around waist, I feel her nose burrow into my neck and her breaths effortlessly move together with mine. In rhythmic time, I feel even more solitary than ever. She mutters, "It's not fair that someone your age should have to have made a decision like this. No one is equipped to handle such a choice."

My words are like the insides of a church bell as it rings, "Leave me alone, Ivy."

Her turn is sudden and almost alarming, but I pay no heed to it. She pushes against me but doesn't detach completely, just shoves me at arm's length and keeps her palms pressed just at my hips, "Of course, Harvey, because you _always_ need to be _left alone._ Because when _everything_ knocks you down, destroys you, leaves you with nothing left to turn to, you simply slink off and turn from the things that seek to console you. You want to be _left alone._"

Her frustrations remind me of Cleave. All of this enrages my muddled mind; everything miserable in my life slips right back to the subject of Sir Cleveland Roger Punsworth. Embittered is the only way to describe the air. Her wrathful anger at me does nothing to dull the razor sharp atmosphere that blankets us both.

"You're alone because you _want_ to be alone, Harvey."

_You're alone because you want to be alone, Harvey._

I really can't believe she just said that.

"If left alone, we all know exactly what will happen, Harvey. I know it and, above all subjects, you know it as well. You're sure of the occurrences that will go on. You'll kill yourself, or you'll hurt yourself, because you can't take it at all. But you beg for this solace that will never come because you simply won't let it. You're a hypocrite."

My mind numbs over slowly along with the rest of me. It's the easiest process, to let go. Just flick the inner switch and it all shuts down so easily, so quickly. My skin is chilly, or is it hot? Or is it so hot that it's cold? I don't really know. I don't care.

I hate the sudden weakness that spills out of my mouth.

"Not now, Ivy. _Anytime _else, not now."

The words taste somewhat like bile.

The mattress squeaks.

The dark sets in.

I'm alone.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wake up to the sound of something very loud and very harsh. It's a clattering, a shattering, something in the kitchen breaking to bits.

Someone shrieks; it's a loud, feminine voice, and someone else follows with a voice like a lion-roar—

"_Where-uh's_ my little fella, toots?!"

It shakes the walls. It takes a battering ram to the forefront of my mind. My bones shake inside their skin-casing, and my throat goes so dry that I can hardly swallow. I affix the pillow on top of my head and crawl under the material. I press it around my face and try to scream into the shallow hush. My fingers are like little strips of fire against the pillow. My entire lower half scrunches up painfully.

_SHATTER._ Something else breaks.

I think _He's here to kill me._

I think _I'm done for. I'm dead._

I think _He's going to do worse than murder me._

Above all, it piles into a heap, I think _Ivy's done for._

And it brings back that throw-up feeling.

"She lost the baby, he-of-much-Maybelline. She's resting in the bedroom. She's very much not well. The entire experience proved fatal for her, emotionally and physically. She's exhausted."

There's a relief that washes over me in an instant wave. _She lied for me_. _She told one huge, huge lie for me._ Such a calm comes toward me like a rushing bull and I exhale deeply. I'm hyperventilating under the smothering pillow. I owe her more gratitude than I do anyone in the entire world. I owe her more than is humanly conceivable.

If I were her, out of spite, I would've sold me out completely.

The air is thick with this kind of tension that I can't explain, but after seconds I realize something. When the voice, the voice I know as Cleave's, comes back, it sounds like it's cracking. His voice runs with the undertones of a fragile laugh, like a continuous giggle, like the kind of laugh you make before you're ready to cry like a bitch, "She—uh…she lost the—the kiddo?"

Buried under the covers I start to cry, too.

Where is this guilt coming from? My intestines are knotty and criss-crossed over each other. I can hardly breathe.

It falls apart it my feet in a hasty second. I stare at the broken shards of memory flickering before my eyes. I've ruined two separate people's lives, and in the process I've destroyed.

More screaming. Shrill. It fades into my ears like an endless pit, a siren. My mind dims it, and there's quiet, but nothing more than the ringing in my head. I just keep gripping the pillow and crying, crying, crying.

A pair of cold hands scoop me up and into their overly powerful grip. They're bony, thin, slender like a skeleton's, and the ragged edges of a shredded mouth presses against my ear and keeps saying, "Come on, Harv-uh-cakes, home, home, home-_uh._"

Someone's screaming.

There's so much screaming.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry I'm a bad person.

Forgive me?

"Home, Harvey, home, we're goin' on home-_uh._ –That's where we're—ah—goin', that's where, Harvey-cakes, home."

Forgive me.

Both of you.


	27. Epilogue: Regrets

Epilogue for yooooou!

XxXxXxXxXx

"Wakey, wakey, it's daybreaky."

Those are the first words to meet my ears when I come around.

"Actually, I – ah, I lied, it's six o'clock at night. But what the hell? Maybe daybreak doesn't have to be a literal thing, maybe it can be sym-bee-olic. Ya know? Like the moment you wake u—"

"Why?"

I stop him in his rambling tracks. There's a shimmery pain behind those watery, puppy-dog eyes, all green and big and soft. His lips purse and pucker a little and the big, obnoxious, threadbare corners of his mouth mash into a collection of scar-tissue wrinkles.

"Why what, Harv-uh-cakes?"

"Why…_everything?"_ I can't bring the words to a logical standpoint. Everything seems to encompass it well enough, _everything_, like the word is the size of the marshmallow man in Ghost Busters. Like _everything_ is clearly synonymous with _rape, impregnate, rip heart out, destroy mental state, take away from only one who cares._ It's as though _everything_ happens to mean all of _those_ things specifically.

"'Cause ya ruin everything, toots. I held a knife up to your throat, I—ah, I threatened to rip ya open with a harpy, I even left you a series of drunk voicemails—"

A pause, and I watch him lean over to flick the answering machine. His slurring voice fills the room. _This is a song! For the loooneellleeeeh! Can you hear me toniiIIIGHT!? –Come ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-ack…_

I don't remember these voicemails.

Whatever.

"I ru-ruin everything, so you rape me in the back of a—"

"Now, you listen here and you listen good-_uh_. I was _reaaaaal_ drunk, and I didn't know you from Andy Griffith on TV-fuckin'-land in my television set-_uh._ So don't sit around and pin on me the mistakes I've always come ta terms with, Harvey." There's a flash of malice in his grip, his wavering, shattering grin, but it doesn't resurface up to his eyes. It doesn't float there like a dead goldfish just helplessly buoyant at the top.

I need to keep in mind that, the next time I get '_reaaaaal' _drunk, I can rape _him_ because—hey! – it's not like I'm doing it on purpose!

If it were Ivy instead of him, Ivy wouldn't say something like 'I was real drunk' or 'TV-fuckin'-land'. Ivy would probably apologize for hurting my feelings to whatever degree.

"So….no kiddo, hah?"

There it is. The corner of his mouth flinches downward in a horrible twitch, like doing frown surgery on a raggedy Andy doll. His hand reaches up, entwines in his shiny, blonde hair and strokes through anxiously. The limp ponytail it's in goes totally unaffected.

"N-N-N-No."

I'm lying so hard. All at once, the depression comes on back like a megaton hammer to the face. It hurts, but it makes me want to cry more than hurt.

"I was going to name him Richard," Is all I say, and I watch his coffee-stained teeth dart out to take his bottom lip between his teeth and gnaw. His nose twitches, like an intent bunny rabbit, "Richard John, after my dad."

It's unexpected, but he ambles up from the squeaky rocking chair and leans over until he's standing over me like a hovercraft. His lips are less of a frown and more of an uncertain slash, now, like a crooked line sped across his face.

"I'm sorry to hear 'bout what happened—ah—ya know? 'Specially since I was lookin' forward ta—"

After what he did, he even expected mutual rights as a parent?

Honestly, Cleave, don't' make me lauguh-cry.

Somewhere in Gotham, I hope Bat-for-brains is feeding him some pretty tasting brand of baby formula and thinking what a briefly brave person Harley Quinn is.

This isn't home. Home is where the heart is. But is my heart here?

I wish I could do more than just stutter out timid sentences and flee away from his eye contact.

Without warning, his arms snake around my neck and his bony chin digs into my shoulder. His breath feels hot on my face, and it smells like the makings of Nathan's hotdogs, the chili stuff.

"I'm suh, suh sor-ree, Harv-cakes…"

Gotham City is quiet tonight. Why?

I can't believe this.

He stays where he is, not making a sound, not twitching a muscle.

And we mourn the losses of two different ideas there, surrounded only by the dust particles fluttering through the tension-packed air.

He mourns the loss of a child he'll never know. I mourn the loss of a child I'll never forget.

We regret.


End file.
